Uth Roeun

In 2000 he founded The Association of Cambodian Artist Friends, based near Wat Phnom.

Comics had a resurgence in the 1980s, with new books being published and surviving books reprinted, though many were pirated without attribution to the artists. These years featured reprints of Uth Roeun's Torn Chey (1985), about a peasant boy who outwits the king, and Tum Teav (1986), an adaptation of the classic Cambodian romance, and his new work New Life in Kompong Preah (1986).

Many comic books were lost during the Khmer Rouge regime. The earliest surviving comic book by Uth Rouen is 1966's One Night for You.

His second book, Preah Thoung Neang Neak (1964), contained content about tolerance towards Muslims, which prompted the police to arrest and interrogate him for a day. He missed an exam and quit school entirely to devote himself to cartooning. He also drew book covers, illustrated magazines and school books, and painted.

He was attending the Lycée Sisowath in 1962 when his art teacher introduced him to French bandes dessinées and he was inspired to draw Khmer language comics. Of his first comic book, the story of two teenage friends, he said "Frankly the illustrations weren’t beautiful. I had no idea how to draw properly. When I’d finished illustrating the first one, no printers wanted to take it [...] it was new and nothing like it had ever been produced before.” Eventually it was published in 1964 as Neytung Neysang, the first Cambodian comic book. The popular book sold twenty thousand copies and earned him four thousand riel.

Uth Roeun (born 1944) is a Cambodian cartoonist responsible for the first Cambodian comic book in 1964. He is a key figure in the "golden age" of Cambodian comics prior to the Khmer Rouge regime.