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Almost immediately after North Korea provoked the world by testing a nuclear weapon, the supplicant said, 'We're sorry. Please, pass the collection basket.' The Dennis The Menance routine was part of the country's shaky policy to extract as many donations as possible in its bid to support a lavish lifestyle for Kim Jong IL without the slightest evidence that his country has an economy.

The repentance was ideally timed to flatter its largest donor nation, China, which sent a nuclear envoy to discuss the upsetting explosion and, with oriental subtlety, to slap his butt for it. Spying the ideal opportunity to stroke its benefactor, at the same time it might head off pending sanctions, North Korea sent him home with a bouquet of wailing regrets.

'How could we have done such a thing?' the official North Korean press agency lamented. 'Imagine how wrong we were! Forgive us and hand over our incentives.'

Confident of abundant support after the departure of the Chinese dupe, the North Korean government held a Bordeaux-tilting celebration. It seems on the way to achieving every goal it hoped for as a result of its calculated one-two punch of nuclear provocation followed with effusive repentance.

Meanwhile, its citizens are left to wonder, amid the governmental hoopla, Where's the economy?