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One trigger for the collapse of the Berlin Wall 20 years ago was the flow of East Germans across their country's newly opened border to Hungary, then on through Austria to West Germany. One day a similar flow of refugees from North Korea to China and on to South Korea could help bring down Kim Jong Il's barbarous regime and help re-unify Korea.

We hope the subject of North Korean refugees in China is on President Obama's agenda when he visits Beijing next week. There are at least tens of thousands of refugees hiding in China and perhaps as many as 300,000, according to human rights groups. Beijing's policy—contrary to international law—is to track them down and send them back to the North, where they face severe punishment for the "crime" of leaving their country...