SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea’s official news agency reported on Friday that a Canadian pastor who has been detained there since February had confessed to crimes aimed at overthrowing the country’s government.

The Rev. Lim Hyeon-soo, who was born in South Korea and has visited the North many times, said at a news conference on Thursday in Pyongyang, the capital, that he had conducted “anti-D.P.R.K. missionary activities,” according to the state-run Korean Central News Agency. D.P.R.K. stands for the North’s formal name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

Mr. Lim, 60, said his goal had been to undermine the North Korean people’s “worship for the leader,” according to the report, a reference to Kim Jong-un, the authoritarian country’s supreme leader.

The report said Mr. Lim was accused of making “subversive plots and activities in a sinister bid to build a religious state” in North Korea “while frequenting it under the guise of ‘humanitarian aid’ and ‘free donation’ over the past 18 years.” The report made no mention of any formal charges against Mr. Lim, however.