OTTAWA, Canada (AFP) – Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau yesterday said he is “very concerned” about North Korea’s sentencing of Canadian Pastor Hyeon Soo Lim to life in prison with hard labour.

“We have tremendous concern about it,” Trudeau told reporters in Ottawa. “The issues of North Korea’s governance and judicial system are well known, and we are very concerned about someone being sentenced to life in North Korea.”

The 60-year-old South Korean-born Hyeon Soo Lim is the latest in a series of foreign missionaries to be arrested, deported or jailed for allegedly meddling in North Korean State affairs.

Canadian officials, noting his advanced age and “fragile health”, earlier called Lim’s sentence “unduly harsh”.

In a statement, foreign ministry spokesman Francois Lasalle said Canadian consular officials had been denied access to Lim, adding that his trial “was our first opportunity to see him”.

“This is a serious violation of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations and the right of states to have consular access to their citizens,” he said.

“Like Mr Lim’s family and friends, the Government of Canada remains concerned for his rights and well-being and wishes to see him return to Canada.”

Trudeau added, “We need to be able to meet with and ensure that Canadians are being properly treated everywhere around the world, including in North Korea, and we will be continuing to press North Korean authorities to allow us access.”

Lim was arrested shortly after his arrival in North Korea via China in January.

Other members of the close-knit circle of ethnic Korean missionaries in the United States and Canada have called him one of the most influential Christian missionaries operating in North Korea.

He had led many aid missions there involving work with orphanage houses, nursing homes, and food-processing factories.

Some of the projects he had worked on, such as a noodle plant and flour mills, were linked to associates of Jang Song-Thaek, the purged uncle of leader Kim Jong-Un. Jang Song-Thaek was dramatically arrested and executed for treason in December 2012.

Pyongyang views foreign missionaries with deep suspicion, although it allows access to some who undertake humanitarian work.

A number of missionaries — mostly US citizens — have been arrested in North Korea in the past with some of them allowed to return home after interventions by high-profile US figures.