SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea’s Supreme Court sentenced a Canadian pastor to hard labor for life on Wednesday, the latest punishment the isolated country has inflicted on outside missionaries, who have been vilified as spies or agents of subversive ideas.

The Rev. Lim Hyeon-soo, a South Korea-born pastor of the Light Korean Presbyterian Church in Toronto, was convicted of carrying out “subversive plots” and committing “activities against” North Korea, like harming the dignity of the supreme leadership of Kim Jong-un, the North’s official Korean Central News Agency said.

The agency said that Mr. Lim, 60, had confessed to “all heinous crimes” he had committed “pursuant to the state-sponsored political terrorism and anti-D.P.R.K. hostile policy of the U.S. and South Korean authorities.” D.P.R.K. stands for the North’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

North Korean prosecutors had called for the death penalty for Mr. Lim, the news agency said, adding that he had also been accused of helping “lure and abduct” North Korean citizens, calling them defectors. But his government-appointed lawyer asked the court to let him live “so he can see the true face” of North Korea, it said.