But they did. They flew their last rocket for 40 minutes and hit the Sea of Japan. 40 minutes is half an orbit. They can hit a target roughly 300km wide on the other side of the planet. We don’t know exactly how accurate their targeting was but it seems a fair assumption they would not have tried to land there if there was a significant risk of hitting South Korean, Russian or Japanese territory.
We don’t know the size of their payload. It might have been 100kg, or it might have been 1000kg. Their demonstrated range is 20000km, but they need half of that to get to the US mainland.
This article says the Taepodong-2 has been capable of hitting the US since 2000.
