North Korea is a notoriously difficult nut to crack in terms of getting reliable information. Scholars, analysts, and intelligence officers scouring the country for clues are often relegated to waiting for the Korean Central News Agency, North Korea’s state-run propaganda machine, to churn out a boilerplate story or issue a statement to get a grasp about Kim Jong Un’s whereabouts or the details of a military exercise. Many times, monitoring North Korea from a distance is less about intelligence collection and more about web browsing. The country, in short, is part-black-box, part-bizarro world.

The one predictable thing about North Korea, however, is that the commentariat treats every development inside the reclusive country, large or small, as an event that needs copious amounts of coverage or insight. Journalists have a tendency to take the relatively mundane (like a short-range ballistic missile splashing into the Sea of Japan) as some kind of groundbreaking event that could directly affect the security of Northeast Asia and the safety of people in America. We pontificate about what we don’t know, sensationalize and exaggerate the ordinary, and offer policy solutions that have either been tried a million times before over the previous two decades or are destined to slam against a brick wall.