North Korea said Saturday it will try a Korean-American detained in Pyongyang for unspecified "crimes" he has admitted to committing.

In a short dispatch, Pyongyang's Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), monitored in Seoul, said Pae Jun-ho will soon be taken to the North's Supreme Court to face trial.

The report said the preliminary inquiry into Pae's crimes has been closed. It said Pae entered Rason City in the North on Nov. 3 of last year and was arrested "for committing crimes" against the communist country. The crimes were not specified.

"In the process of investigation he admitted that he committed crimes aimed to topple the DPRK with hostility toward it," the report said, referring to the North by its official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. "His crimes were proved by evidence."

In South Korean media, the man has been identified as Kenneth Bae. Reports here said he entered North Korea with five other tourists.

Several U.S. citizens have been detained in recent years in North Korea, but all were released after negotiations.

The United States has no diplomatic ties with North Korea, and its interest in the isolated country has often been represented by the Swedish Embassy there.

Last year, Eddie Yong Su Jun, a Korean-American missionary, was released after facing indictment on charges of committing an unspecified crime against the North.

In 2010, North Korea set free Robert Park, a Korean-American Christian activist who entered the country on Christmas Day 2009 to draw international attention to the North's human rights abuse.

In 2009, former U.S. President Bill Clinton flew to Pyongyang to win the release of two American journalists arrested during a reporting tour covering North Korean defectors. (Yonhap News)