Haing Somnang Ngor was an American gynecologist, obstetrician, actor, and author.
Background
Ethnicity:
He was the son of an Chinese father and a Khmer mother.
Haing Ngor was born on March 20, 1940 in Samrong Yong, Cambodia. In 1979 he immigrated to Thailand, and already in 1980 he left it for the United States.
Education
Haing graduated from medical school in Cambodia, and then he attended Khmer Rouge school of acting.
Career
Having obtained his degree, he set up an obstetrics-gynecology clinic in Phnom Penh, and served as a Cambodian army doctor. In 1975 the Khmer Rouge, a group of Maoist guerrillas led by Pol Pot, took control of the country and began a campaign of genocide aimed at ridding Cambodia of all Western cultural influences. Captured by the Khmer Rouge, Ngor, like all other urban dwellers in Phnom Penh, was force-marched into the countryside, where he worked as a slave laborer, breaking rocks. In a situation in which some three million Cambodians died from such causes as beating or starvation, Ngor managed to survive, foraging for small bits of food, and acting the part of an illiterate despite being frequently suspected.
In May, 1979, the Pol Pot regime collapsed, and Ngor, whose parents, two sisters, and two of three brothers had been killed, rescued a young niece and escaped with her and a friend over the border into Thailand. For eighteen months he worked as a doctor in refugee camps there. He was at first denied entry into Australia and the United States because he did not have relatives in those countries. However, he was eventually allowed into the United States in leaving Thailand on October 1, 1980, and arriving in his new country with four dollars in his pocket.
Without a license to practice medicine in the U.S., Ngor took a job as a night security guard. One month after his arrival, he became a caseworker for the Chinatown Service Center in Los Angeles, helping Cambodian refugees find work. Urged to take acting roles by fellow Cambodian refugees, he was uninterested at first, but met a casting director for "The Killing Fields" while at a party. Some seven thousand Cambodian refugees were trying to obtain parts in the film. Director Roland Joff made him read a particularly emotional scene five times; each time, he found Ngor’s performance affecting.
It was not until Ngor arrived with the film company in Thailand that he learned he had been given the costarring role of Dith Pran, a real-life Cambodian news photographer who had helped New York Times reporter Sydney Schanberg escape that country, had then been caught by the Khmer Rouge, and had, much like Ngor, escaped after years of terrible hardship. In 1987 Ngor co-authored an autobiography, "A Cambodian Odyssey", with journalist Roger Warner.
Ngor acted periodically in other films, notably Oliver Stone’s "Heaven and Earth" in 1993, the story of a Vietnamese woman who is victimized by all sides in the Vietnam War. Yet Ngor continued his work as a job counselor, and spent a good deal of his time working on behalf of Cambodian refugees in Thailand, France, and Belgium. His ambition was to establish a medical center for refugees in Thailand. However, on a Sunday evening in February, 1996. he was shot in the chest after pulling into the driveway of his two-bedroom apartment near Los Angeles Chinatown.
Haing was always involved in helping bring the perpetrators of Cambodian genocide to justice.
Personality
Haing S. Ngor is fluent in nine languages. He clearly enjoyed such perks of fame as riding in limousines and being asked for his autograph.
Connections
In the forced labor camp, Ngor fell in love with a woman, Chang My Houy, who conceived a child with him. They were unable to marry, and she died of labor complications resulting from malnutrition on June 2, 1978.