According to statistics in a yearbook published by the North, North Korea's population grew a mere 0.89 percent to 22.55 million in 1998 from a year earlier. The 2001 edition of the country's yearbook published in October shows that the population of the communist country increased just 199,000 between 1997 and 1998. In recent years, the growth rate of the famine-stricken country's population has hovered above the 1 percent mark, recording 1.5 percent in 1993 and 1.09 percent in 1996.