It's been an eventful year for the rival space programmes of Seoul and Pyongyang: on May 25, South Korea for the first time used an indigenous launch vehicle to place a mission-capable satellite in orbit, and a few days later, North Korea launched a new rocket design from a new facility.
These rockets are the result of decades of development. South Korea's Nuri launcher is its first entirely indigenous design, and Seoul has ambitions of placing military and civilian satellites in orbit.
The North has cycled through several dramatically different launchers, and its Chollima-1 booster appears more advanced than anything it has flown to date, although its maiden test in May ended in failure.
