An Australian man has been detained in Pyongyang for attempting to spread religious materials while in North Korea as a tourist. 75-year old missionary John Short, who lives in Hong Kong, was arrested at his hotel last weekend. He was on his second trip to the country.

The story has since been confirmed by Short’s wife, who informed Australian broadcaster ABC today, "My husband does what he believes is what God wants him to do.”

"Without sounding strange, that's him, he's a man of faith,” she went on. “We're faith missionaries and he believed that we should care and not just talk but do something.”

Short was carrying music and other materials in Korean.

The Australian government has acknowledged that it is working with the Swedish Embassy in Pyongyang, which handles Canberra’s interests in the country, to establish the facts of the matter. It is unclear whether Short's release will be possible in the short term given the nature of his actions.

“It’s a fascist state and they would take a very dim view of anyone distributing information that doesn't concur with the state ideology,” former Australian Foreign Minister Alistair Downer told a local Adelaide newspaper today. “A worse place to be caught doing something like that is unimaginable.”