The People's Republic of Kampuchea (PRK) was a partially recognised client state in Southeast Asia supported by Vietnam which existed from 1979 to 1989. It was founded in Cambodia by the Kampuchean United Front for National Salvation, a group of Cambodian communists who were dissatisfied with the Khmer Rouge due to its oppressive rule of Cambodia and defected from it after the overthrow of Democratic Kampuchea, Pol Pot's government. Brought about by an invasion from Vietnam, which routed the Khmer Rouge armies, it had Vietnam and the Soviet Union as its main allies.
The PRK failed to secure United Nations endorsement due to the diplomatic intervention of China, the United Kingdom, the United States and the ASEAN countries. The Cambodian seat at the United Nations was held by the Coalition Government of Democratic Kampuchea, which was the Khmer Rouge in coalition with two non-communist guerrilla factions. However, the PRK was considered the de facto government of Cambodia between 1979 and 1993, albeit with limited international recognition outside of the Soviet Bloc.
Beginning May 1989, the PRK restored the name "Cambodia" by renaming the country State of Cambodia (SOC) during the last four years of its existence in an attempt to attract international sympathy. However, it retained most of its leadership and one-party structure while undergoing a transition and eventually giving way to the restoration of the Kingdom of Cambodia. The PRK/SOC existed as a communist state from 1979 until 1991, the year in which the ruling single party abandoned its Marxist–Leninist ideology.
Under Vietnamese control, the PRK was established in the wake of the total destruction of the country's institutions, infrastructure and intelligentsia wreaked by Khmer Rouge rule.
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