Over the last 25 years, the U.S., Europe, South Korea, Japan, and everybody else that has tried to keep the Kim dynasty on a short leash have become used to ballistic missile launches by the reclusive east Asian nation of North Korea. W
hen a projectile flies for a few hundred miles and crashes into the East Sea, we no longer bat much of an eye — the international community expects Pyongyang to violate United Nations Security Council resolutions.

Whilte not a first, this week’s launch of a North Korean intermediate range ballistic missile was far from normal, however. It flew over Japanese territory, an arc that North Korea usually avoids due to the geopolitical complications of traversing a neighbor’s airspace (Japanese citizens got text messages from the government on their cellphones warning about possible debris from the missile).