5 Riels Khmer Rouge

Pick R1 designates a note issued not by the National Bank of Cambodia but under Khmer Rouge authority — a faction that had, by the 1990s, been reduced to a guerrilla force operating from jungle strongholds along the Thai border. The "1993–1999" date range reflects estimated circulation period, not a formal issue date; the Khmer Rouge had no functioning central bank infrastructure during these years.

The Khmer Rouge abolished currency entirely during their 1975–1979 rule, so this note represents an ideological reversal — a movement that once destroyed Cambodia's entire monetary system later printing its own scrip to sustain a shrinking insurgency. Whether these notes saw genuine transactional use or functioned primarily as propaganda instruments within controlled territory remains contested among researchers.