North Korea Says to Put U.S. Citizen on Trial

North Korea said Saturday that it would put a U.S. citizen on trial for trying to overthrow the communist regime, in the face of soaring tensions between Pyongyang and the West.

The North's official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said U.S. citizen Pae Jun-Ho had admitted to the charges and would soon face "judgment.”

Pae was arrested in November as he entered the northeastern port city of Rason, which lies inside a special economic zone near North Korea's border with Russia and China.

The announcement follows a months-long standoff on the Korean peninsula stoked by the North's nuclear test in February, which prompted the U.N. Security Council to impose fresh sanctions on the isolated nation.

KCNA said a "preliminary inquiry" had been completed for Pae.

"He admitted that he committed crimes aimed to topple the DPRK (Democratic People's Republic of Korea) with hostility toward it. His crimes were proved by evidence.

"He will soon be taken to the Supreme Court of the DPRK to face judgment," according to the report, which did not say what the charges were based on.

South Korean media in December identified the detainee as a 44-year-old Korean-American tour operator.

He was traveling with five other tourists and was detained when a computer hard disk was found among the group's belongings, according to the South Korean newspaper Kookmin Ilbo.

Several Americans have been held in North Korea in recent years.

In 2011, a U.S. delegation led by Robert King, the U.S. special envoy for human rights and humanitarian issues, secured the release of Eddie Jun Yong-Su, a California-based businessman, who had been detained for apparent missionary activities.

In 2010, former U.S. president Jimmy Carter won plaudits when he negotiated the release of American national Aijalon Mahli Gomes, sentenced to eight years of hard labor for illegally crossing into the North from China.

On another mercy mission a year earlier in 2009, former president Bill Clinton won the release of US television journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee, jailed after wandering across the North Korean border with China.

Relations between the two Koreas have worsened markedly in recent months, with Seoul announcing on Friday a complete withdrawal from a jointly run industrial park in the North.