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It might be nothing, but North Korea's neighbors appear to be making preparations just in case something drastic happens in Pyongyang.

The Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) supposedly has increased its deployments along the North Korean border since September, reinforcing border monitoring and barrier systems, the Financial Times reported Thursday, citing unnamed U.S. officials. While this report is unconfirmed, it does fit the pattern of other preparations regional powers have been making.

On Oct. 28, South Korean media reported that U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates was pushing the Pentagon to upgrade existing contingency plans, designed for dealing with civil war or anarchy in North Korea, into more concrete operational plans. Then on Nov. 12, a Japanese newspaper reported that the U.S. military and the Japanese Self Defense Forces were reviewing possibilities for joint operations in response to a potential emergency in the Korean Peninsula or Japan.

Now, with this new report about PLA forces, China in theory is anticipating the need to deal with masses of North Koreans fleeing famine conditions. And on Wednesday, North Korea itself announced that in December it plans to close the demilitarized zone along the border with South Korea to cross-border traffic (of which there is not much in any case). That’s rarely a sign that everything is going well.

North Korea has always been a rather odd place — dominated after its founding in 1948 by the personality cult of Kim Il Sung, and since his 1994 death by his son, the equally cultish Kim Jong Il. Northeast Asia has been plagued of late with reports that the junior Kim is gravely ill, raising the possibility (perhaps even probability) of an impending leadership transition, which would be only the second in the country’s modern history.