This Time for Sure?

I've stopped looking for the latest event in North Korea that would signal the collapse of the regime or the state itself. Normality in North Korea is so bad that figuring out what bad thing is so out of the ordinary as to signal doom is pointless (from my vantage point, anyway). But Strategypage writes that the regime is certainly teetering as the base crumbles:

[The] North Korean police state is coming apart. This is not like in the past, when there were often rumors of imminent collapse in the north. This time, there are more ways to get factual evidence of what is happening.

It isn't just the people taking it in the pants, anymore. The pain has spread to the military and secret police. Only the still-pampered elites thrive. The rest are enduring at best and starving at worst. And even without a free press and freedom of speech, the people of North Korea know how bad it is and that it isn't that way in the rest of the world.