Pyongyang, March 12 -- Turnout in North Korea's single-candidate elections hit 99.99 percent this year, state media said Tuesday -- up from a seemingly unimprovable 99.97 per cent the last time they were held.

With participation figures that Western democracies would never achieve, millions of North Koreans head to nationwide polls every five years to elect the rubber-stamp legislature known as the Supreme People's Assembly.

But with only one approved name on each voting slip in the isolated country, which is ruled with an iron grip by Kim Jong Un's Workers' Party, the result is never in doubt.

This year's turnout fell just short of 100 percent as those "abroad or working in oceans" were unable to take part, the North's official KCNA n...