North Korea has sentenced a South Korean Baptist missionary to hard labour for life for spying and trying to set up underground churches.

Kim Jung-Wook is the latest in a string of missionaries to run into trouble in the north.

North Korean state media said the missionary was tried on Friday and admitted anti-North Korean religious acts and "malignantly hurting the dignity" of the country's supreme leadership, a reference to the ruling Kim family. The totalitarian north tolerates only strictly sanctioned religious services.