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Norodom Sihamoni ((クメール語:នរោត្តម សីហមុនី); born 14 May 1953) became the King of Cambodia on 14 October 2004. He is the eldest son of Norodom Sihanouk and his second wife Norodom Monineath. He was Cambodia's ambassador to UNESCO and named by a nine-member throne council to become the next king after his father Norodom Sihanouk abdicated in 2004. Before ascending the throne, Sihamoni was best known for his work as a cultural ambassador in Europe and as a classical dance instructor. ==Early life== Sihamoni was born in 1953. At the time of his birth and that of his younger brother, his mother Monique Izzi, a Cambodian citizen of French-Corsican-Italian and Khmer ancestry, had been one of King Norodom Sihanouk's consorts after being a constant companion since the day they met in 1951, when she won first prize in a national beauty contest.〔"The First Lady of the Kingdom"; ''The Royal House of Cambodia'' by Julio A. Jeldres, 2003 〕 She was granted the title of Neak Moneang and the name of Monineath at the time of her marriage to King Norodom Sihanouk in 1952. Furthermore, Queen Monineath is a step-granddaughter of the late Prince Norodom Duongchak of Cambodia, and the daughter of Pomme Peang and of her second husband, Jean-François Izzi, a French-Italian banker.〔(King's biography )〕 The Royal Ark website entry about the genealogy of the Cambodian royal family states that Sihanouk and Monineath were married twice, once on 12 April 1952, when she was 15, and again ("more formally", according to the website) on 5 March 1955. She is described as Sihanouk's seventh wife. Norodom Sihamoni has 14 half-brothers and half-sisters by his father; his only full sibling, a younger brother, Samdech Norodom Narindrapong, was born in 1954 and died in 2003. He has spent most of his life outside Cambodia. As a child Sihamoni was sent to Prague, Czechoslovakia, by his father in 1962, where he attended elementary school, high school and Academy of Music Arts, and studied classical dance and music almost continuously until 1975. During the 1970 coup d'état by Lon Nol, Sihamoni remained in Czechoslovakia. In 1975 he left Prague and began to study filmmaking in North Korea, and in 1977 returned to Cambodia. Immediately, the ruling Khmer Rouge government turned against the monarchy, and put the royal family including Sihamoni under house arrest until the 1979 Vietnamese invasion. In 1981 he moved to France to teach ballet, and was later president of the Khmer Dance Association. He lived in France for nearly 20 years, regularly visiting Prague, where he had spent his childhood and youth. He is the only ruling monarch who speaks Czech. Besides his native Khmer, he is fluent in French and Czech and is a good speaker of English and Russian. In 1993 the prince was appointed Cambodia's delegate to Paris-based UNESCO, where he became known for his hard work and his devotion to Cambodian culture. He had previously refused an appointment as Cambodia's ambassador to France.〔The Weekend Australian, 16–17 October 2004〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Norodom Sihamoni」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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