Photo Illustration by Luis G. Rendon/The Daily Beast/Getty
North Korea has test-fired a missile on its longest flight ever over Japan, inspiring the U.S. and South Korea to stage their own show of force with precision strikes on an islet in the Yellow Sea near North Korea’s southwest coast.
The tit-for-tat exchange ratcheted up a sense of crisis in which North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un is defying threats by both Washington and Seoul to punish him while he makes good on his vow never to give up his nuclear program, sanctified in a newly passed law authorizing the North to nuke its enemies whenever Kim feels like it.
The latest missile, the 39th the North has test-fired this year and the strongest since January, sent northern Japan into a panic, soaring 600 miles high over the large northern Japanese island of Hokkaido before landing in the northern Pacific 2,600 miles from its launch site near the North’s border with China.