Fresh information seeping out of communist North Korea indicates that political repression and living conditions have become even more harsh than reported earlier. That has intensified speculation that the regime of Kim Jong Il, the dictatorial ruler who has himself been ill, is on the road to collapse.

After reciting a litany of Pyongyang's repressive tactics, an American authority on that country said: "The regime has literally terrorized the North Korean public with this intimidation." A pro-North Korean research organization in South Korea reported that food shortages were so bad in one North Korean province that living conditions there were no better than those of the 1960s.

The organization's newsletter quoted a 60 year old man who had visited that particular province: "'You cannot see corn; there is no electric light so people use pine wood fires rather than electric light.' He said that, due to strict surveillance and control by the police, bringing food to relatives is very difficult."

In turn, these reports raise troubling questions about whether the US, South Korea, and other nations can or should negotiate with North Korea, whether the pain in the North Korean public has filtered into the armed forces that are the ultimate source of Kim's power, and whether the US and South Korea have plans to secure North Korea's nuclear weapons if the regime crumbles.

The US authority on North Korea, Marcus Noland, deputy director of the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, has been among the few American scholars who, since 1985, have written extensively on North Korea. He was interviewed during a visit to Honolulu.

Noland said the North Korean penal code was revised in 2004 to establish four types of institutions: jails for misdemeanors, prisons for felons, mandatory labor training facilities, and gulags for political prisoners. "The penal system has evolved," he said, "with gulags for political prisoners that are straight out of the Soviet playbook."

Before, the penal code defined about seven economic crimes; that has been expanded to more than70 crimes. The police, not the statutes, determine the crimes. "This makes everybody a criminal," Noland said. "The police make arbitrary decisions about whom to incarcerate."

In interviews with North Korean refugees outside North Korea, Noland said, everyone said he or she had been detained by the police at least once. More than 40 percent said they had been detained at least overnight. At least half of those detained had been witnesses to executions.

Only 6 or 7 percent, however, said they had seen forced abortions or infanticide and no one had seen medical experiments. The refugees contended that abuses took place throughout the country, with people increasingly resorting to bribery to escape arrest.

Barriers to North Korean opposition are formidable. "There is no civil society, no unions, no churches or other groups to oppose the government," Noland said. "Only the military is capable of challenging the government." Little is known about dissent within those forces.

Noland said investigators were aware that refugees might tell them what they thought the investigators wanted to hear. Thus, investigators included questions to which they knew the answers. If the refugee gave the same answer, he was deemed to be truthful.

Goodfriends, the South Korean organization sympathetic to North Korea, said North Koreans refrained from speculating on Kim Jong Il's health. It quoted a North Korean official saying "those who circulate a rumor about his health could be arrested by security agents for committing a political offense."

North Korea's economic plight was underscored when construction of a hydroelectric dam was suspended for lack of food for the workers. Their rations had already been cut to 500 grams from 700 grams a day. That's a little over a pound of food-for a construction worker.