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They do that Ductch and I'd be willing to bet Rocket Man's lunch would be be cooked and served by the Chinese. I was flying missions in that area in the 70's. The Chinese take an extremely dim view of foreign entities getting too close. We still have an EP3 sitting on Hainin Island over there.
It is also headed straight over some South Korean and Chinese Islands as well as strait at all of the Shema and Jima Islands (considered Japanese Home Islands) as well as Taiwan and Okno....
Can you imagine what would happen if we splashed a missile a few miles off of Cuba, or Russia splashed one a few miles off of Alaska?
We spent many hours flying out of Midway spying on the Russians, who were spying on us, spying on them when we or they shot ICBM flights into the waters out there. I'm sure if you did much Westpac time you most likely were involved in some of that sending the Hawkeyes in for ELINT.......Those were high stress where the "confidence was high" should someone hiccup.
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So they have a range they COULD use - but chose not to.

Could recent sanctions against them have so tightened their budget that they could only do a single stage and wanted to maximize publicity from it?

 

They don't want to Tic off what is left of the only friend (term used lightly) they have in the area. If they do....well just remember 1979 when Vietnam sent troops into Cambodia after the Khmer Rouge.

It is interesting with all their posturing on the land based ICBM's, you haven't heard anything about the "big deal" sub launched ICBM the were waiving in everyone's faces in April of last year.

Could be the scientists have as many worms as the soldiers do!?!?!?!?!?!

 

I don't think so. By keeping impact close to the shore, but not close enough to scare China or South Korea (which happened to slide it out towards Japan), they kept from spooking anyone by overflying Japan and heading way out into the Pacific.

Once it starts a trajectory that isn't just about straight up and straight down, other countries are going to get involved. Any hint of a nuke being fired at Hawaii or Alaska might draw a response. Remember we still have boomers hiding out there somewhere.