HERE’S MORE on China’s effort to silence North Korean dissidents, mentioned below:

China has hunted down and arrested a North Korean defector who revealed the first documentary evidence of Pyongyang’s chemical and biological experiments on political prisoners, said his supporters yesterday.

Kang Byong-sop, 59, was seized on the Chinese-Laotian border with his wife and youngest son, aged 25, last month after escaping from North Korea with proof that the Stalinist regime is killing political prisoners by experimenting on them with biological and chemical weapons. . . .

Mr Kim believes it was no coincidence that the senior border official was present. He is convinced that the Chinese authorities, alerted to the potential value of their prey, had been offered “a considerable financial inducement” to find Mr Kang.

“Mr Kang is easy to identify,” Mr Kim said. “He has to walk bent almost double after interrogation in North Korea. On one occasion his back was broken and on another he was dropped on his head, snapping his neck.”

The Chinese seem awfully eager to keep this quiet. Is it because the North Koreans are bribing them, as this story suggests? Or is there more to it than that?