North Koreans went to the polls Sunday for an election in which there could be only one winner. Leader Kim Jong Un's ruling Workers' Party has an iron grip on the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, as the isolated, nuclear-armed country is officially known.
But every five years it holds an election for the rubber stamp legislature, known as the Supreme People's Assembly. And in keeping with one of Pyongyang's most enduring slogans - "Single-minded unity" - there is only one approved name on each of the red ballot papers.
With portraits of the leader's father Kim Jong Il and grandfather Kim Il Sung looking down on every ballot box, voters lined up to drop their slips inside. There is a pencil in the panelled voting booths for anyone who might wish to register dissent by crossing out a candidate's name. But no one does.
Turnout last time was 99.97 percent, according to the official KCNA news agency - only those who were abroad or "working in oceans" did not take part. And the vote was 100 percent in favour of the named candidates, a result unmatched anywhere else in the world.
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