SEOUL — A man being held in North Korea on espionage charges has “no relationship” to the South Korea’s intelligence services, a government official said.

Kim Dong Chul told CNN that he is a US citizen who spied on behalf of “South Korean conservative elements” before his arrest in North Korea in October. CNN was allowed to interview Kim by North Korean officials at a hotel near Pyongyang. Kim told CNN he was a businessman living in China and regularly travelled across the border to North Korea. He began spying after unidentified South Koreans “filled me with a hatred toward North Korea,” he told CNN. 

The man has no ties to South Korea’s National Intelligence Service, said an official of the agency, who declined to be identified citing policy. US State Department spokesman John Kirby declined to confirm details of the report at a briefing in Washington. The CNN report was the first public news of Kim’s detention and came less than a week after North Korea’s fourth test of a nuclear device.

Tensions on the peninsula have spiked since North Korea conducted what it claims was a hydrogen bomb test on Jan 6. The US flew a B-52 long-range bomber over South Korea in a show of force, while the government in Seoul resumed propaganda broadcasts critical of the Kim regime. North Korea has turned on its own propaganda loudspeakers, South Korean Defense Ministry spokesman Kim Min Seok said today (Jan 12). South Korea and the US have also pledged a tightening of international sanctions against the regime.

Diplomats from South Korea, Japan and the US are meeting this week in Seoul and Tokyo as they try to coordinate their efforts to impose tougher sanctions. South Korean nuclear negotiator Hwang Joon Kook will also meet with his Chinese counterpart Wu Dawei in China on Thursday to discuss the issue, according to South Korea’s Foreign Ministry.

North Korea has used detained US nationals in the past as bait to draw prominent American figures into Pyongyang and open dialogue with Washington. North Korea last month sentenced a Canadian pastor to life imprisonment for what it called a plot to overthrow the state. The US has no diplomatic mission in the capital and is represented by the Swedish embassy. BLOOMBERG