Australian student Alek Sigley was spying, spreading propaganda: North Korea

Seoul: An Australian student detained by North Korea for a week had spread anti-Pyongyang propaganda and engaged in espionage by providing photos and other materials to news outlets with critical views toward the North, North Korea has alleged.

Pyongyang's official Korean Central News Agency, or KCNA, said the North deported Alek Sigley on Thursday after he pleaded for forgiveness over his activities, which the agency said infringed on North Korea's sovereignty.

Sigley arrived in Tokyo on Thursday after telling reporters he was in "very good" condition, but without saying what happened to him.

He had been studying at a Pyongyang university and guiding tours in the North Korean capital before disappearing from social media contact with family and friends.

KCNA said Sigley, who was caught "red-handed" by a "relevant institution" of the North on June 25, had abused his status as a student by "combing" through Pyongyang and providing photos and other information to news sites such as NK News and other "anti-DPRK" media, a reference to the North's formal name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

The news agency said the North expelled Sigley out of "humanitarian leniency."

"He honestly admitted his spying acts of systematically collecting and offering data about the domestic situation of the DPRK and repeatedly asked for pardon, apologising for encroachment upon the sovereignty of the DPRK," the agency said.

The North had not commented on Sigley before Saturday.

Sigley was released by North Korea following intervention by Swedish diplomats. After Sigley's arrival in Beijing, he went to Tokyo to reunite with his Japanese wife, who he married in Pyongyang last year.

During his time in North Korea, Sigley often shared details about his life in Pyongyang through social media and the website of his travel agency, Tongil Tours. He frequently challenged negative outside perceptions about the North, and at times boasted about the extraordinary freedom he had as one of the few foreign students living there.

Alek Sigley arrived in Beijing on Thursday. Credit: AP

He also wrote op-eds and essays that appeared in the Western media, including NK News, although none of them seemed outwardly critical of the North's government and political system.

NK News issued a prompt response to the allegations.

“NK News firstly appreciates the DPRK’s decision to promptly release Sigley on humanitarian grounds,” wrote NK News chief executive Chad O'Carroll in a statement.

“Alek Sigley’s well-read columns presented an apolitical and insightful view of life in Pyongyang which we published in a bid to show vignettes of ordinary daily life in the capital to our readers.

“The six articles Alek published represent the full extent of his work with us and the idea that those columns, published transparently under his name between January and April 2019, are “anti-state” in nature is a misrepresentation which we reject.”

North Korea has been accused in the past of detaining Westerners and using them as political pawns to gain concessions. Sigley's father, Gary Sigley, a professor of Asian studies at the University of Western Australia, said his son was treated well in North Korea.

It was a much happier outcome than the case of American college student Otto Warmbier, who was convicted of attempting to steal a propaganda poster and imprisoned in North Korea. Warmbier died shortly after being sent back home to the US in a vegetative state in June 2017.

AP