The court said Mr Lim was guilty of joining the US and South Korea in anti-North Korea human rights “racket” and fabricating and circulating false propaganda materials tarnishing the country’s image, Xinhua news agency said.
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North Korea’s highest court has sentenced a South Korea-born Canadian pastor to hard labour for life for subversion, the North’s official KCNA news agency reported on Wednesday.
The South Korean-born leader of the Light Korean Presbyterian Church in Toronto appeared briefly before the country’s Supreme Court in Pyongyang before being handed his sentence.
Lim had earlier appeared at a news conference organized by North Korean authorities in Pyongyang in July and admitted to plotting to overthrow the North Korean state, but other foreigners detained in North Korea and then released have said they were coerced into making similar statements and confessing guilt during their detention.
KCNA did not mention what specific activities Lim engaged in, but Xinhua reported that Lim confessed to helping people defect from North Korea, and had met the United States. ambassador to Mongolia regarding the plans.
The court sentenced him to hard labour for life, it said.
Pastor Eric Foley from Voice of Martyrs, an global missionary group told NK News that “Lim’s imprisonment shows that North Korea is against any kind of Christian activities in North Korea”.
Relatives of Lim have said he travelled to North Korea on 31 January as part of a regular humanitarian mission where he supports a nursing home, a nursery and an orphanage.
Lim started the Light Korean Presbyterian Church in Mississauga, Ont., almost three decades ago, shortly after he immigrated from South Korea.
But behind the scenes, the Canadian government waged an aggressive campaign to win Lim’s freedom, according to a source with knowledge of the proceedings.
Kenneth Bae, a Korean-American missionary, was released in November last year after about two years of detention in the communist nation.
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It said back in March that he had “a very serious health problem” and required prescription medicine.
