North Koreans are fleeing to China in increasing numbers.

Chinese police posing as smugglers arrested 58 North Korean refugees shortly before they were to be secretly ferried out of China and taken to South Korea and Japan, an international aid worker said Monday.

I get a sick feeling thinking of what fate awaits the poor souls repatriated to North Korea (as required by a treaty with China). As casually brutal as Kim Jong Il's regime is when it's not even trying, how bad must it be when you have their full attention? Winston Smith probably got off lightly in comparison.

Link courtesy of Ben Fisher, by way of InstaPundit. Glenn thinks this may be a sign that Kim's regime may be near collapse. I sure hope so; and I suspect that if and when it does, we will see revealed a human tragedy on a par with the Holocaust or Cambodia's killing fields. Fifty years of Stalinism can breed a lot of human suffering.