Problems POP-ing email

I've been a long-time user of KMail, beginning around RH5, I think (that 
tells you how long ago THAT was!) This morning, for some strange reason, I 
was unable to retrieve emails via POP3.

The exact error message is as follows: The process for the 
pop3://<mailserver> protocol died unexpectedly

I checked all the log files I could think of (/var/spool/mail/john, 
/var/log/messages) and found nothing to account for the problem.

I know it wasn't my entire system as I was able to telnet on port 110 to my 
work POP server, and was able to fire up Evolution and quickly configure an 
email account there as well.

Then when I get to work and log back into my system from remote, I'm able 
to POP email again.

This just does not make sense. Any ideas on where to start trying to 
troubleshoot the problem?