"It's true," said Han Jong Yop, assistant North Korean ambassador to China, scowling at a reporter. "No one in Pyongyang has dared to smile in 50 years."

The furrowed brow program, he said, was necessitated by "relentless attempts to destroy us. You would frown too if George W. Bush had plopped you down on his Axis of Evil."

Ordinary North Koreans gathered in the streets to glower toward Alaska.

"No undue manifestations of happiness occur," proclaimed a banner at an anti-U.S. rally. "Let us smash the provocative scheme of false accusations of expressions of joy with the united might of all people."

Others carried signs bearing the likeness of Kim Il Sung, the former president of North Korea, "the Grim Lodestar of the Revolution, the Most Grouchy Supreme Comrade, the Entirely Humorless Vanquisher of the Japanese."

Hundreds of thousands of North Korean troops, massed near the border with South Korea, muttered darkly, held bayonet practice, and kicked mud. Countless others shouted, "Long live the baleful banner of Marxist-Leninist-style proletariat internationalism."

The rumpus caused the ground to quiver in Seoul, South Korea. Dishes fell from cabinets. Cats hid under beds. To defuse the crisis, U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney offered to meet North Korean President Kim Jong Il in a "stare-down."