SEOUL (Reuters) - A U.S. student held in North Korea since early January was detained for trying to steal an item bearing a propaganda slogan from his Pyongyang hotel and has confessed to “severe crimes” against the state, the North’s official media said on Monday. 
 
 Otto Warmbier, 21, a University of Virginia student, was detained before boarding his flight to China over an unspecified incident at his hotel, his tour agency told Reuters in January. 
 
 North Korea has a long history of detaining foreigners and has used jailed U.S. citizens in the past to extract high-profile visits from the United States, with which it has no formal diplomatic relations. 
 
 “I committed the crime of taking out a political slogan from the staff-only area of the Yanggakdo International Hotel,” the North’s KCNA news agency quoted Warmbier as telling media in Pyongyang, the North Korean capital. It did not say what the item was. 
 
 CNN showed video of a sobbing Warmbier saying: “I have made the worst mistake of my life, but please act to save me.” 
 
 Warmbier said a “deaconess” had offered him a used car worth $10,000 if he could present a U.S. church with the slogan as a “trophy” from North Korea, KCNA said. 
 
 The acquaintance also said the church would pay his mother $200,000 if he was detained by the North and did not return, KCNA quoted Warmbier as saying. 
 
 “My crime is very severe and pre-planned,” Warmbier was quoted as saying, adding that he was impressed by North Korea’s “humanitarian treatment of severe criminals like myself.” 
 
 Related Coverage White House says it is aware of U.S. student held in North Korea 
 
 The White House said on Monday it was aware of Warmbier’s situation and was working closely with Sweden, the United States’ protecting power in North Korea, to learn as much as it can about Warmbier’s detention. 
 
 “There’s no greater priority for the administration than the welfare and safety of U.S. citizens abroad,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest told a daily briefing. 
 
 Warmbier’s parents have not heard from him since his arrest, according to a statement from his family provided by the University of Virginia. 
 
 “I hope the fact that he has conveyed his sincere apology for anything that he may have done wrong will now make it possible for the DPRK (North Korea) authorities to allow him to return home,” the statement said. 
 
 “I urge the DPRK government to consider his youth and make an important humanitarian gesture by allowing him to return to his loved ones.” 
 
 Other Westerners detained in North Korea previously have confessed to crimes against the state. 
 
 North Korea’s state media said in January that Warmbier “was caught committing a hostile act against the state”, which it said was “tolerated and manipulated by the U.S. government”. 
 
 The senior pastor at Friendship United Methodist Church in Wyoming, Ohio, told CNN he did not know the person identified by Warmbier in the KCNA story as a deaconess there, and said Warmbier was not a member of the congregation. 
 
 Otto Frederick Warmbier, a University of Virginia student who has been detained in North Korea since early January, attends a news conference in Pyongyang, North Korea, in this photo released by Kyodo February 29, 2016. REUTERS/Kyodo 
 
 Warmbier, a member of the Theta Chi fraternity at the University of Virginia, is studying economics with a minor in global sustainability, according to his Linkedin page. Members of the fraternity were not immediately available for comment. 
 
 Warmbier was a finance and operations intern at Finishing Technology, his father’s firm, from June 2010 to August 2013, and helped run a student investment fund at the University of Virginia, according to his Linkedin profile. 
 
 He also took a class at the London School of Economics and Political Science in 2015. 
 
 According to KCNA, Warmbier said he was encouraged in his act by a member of the Z Society, an elite philanthropic organization that he hoped to join at the university. 
 
 An official in the university’s communications office could not immediately be reached for comment. 
 
 Warmbier grew up in Wyoming, Ohio, northeast of Cincinnati. He attended Wyoming High School, where he was the salutatorian of his graduating class and was named student of the year, according to Linkedin. 
 
 A district spokeswoman declined to speak about his time at the school. 
 
 Warmbier was active in swimming when he was younger, according to a blog operated by a local athletic booster organization, and he volunteered as a coach for a local children’s swim team. 
 
 Warmbier, on a five-day New Year’s tour of North Korea with a group of 20, was delayed at immigration before being taken away by two airport officials, according to a tour operator that had sponsored the trip. 
 
 Slideshow (4 Images) 
 
 While most tourists to North Korea are from China, roughly 6,000 Westerners visit annually, though the United States and Canada advise against it. 
 
 Most are curious about life behind the last sliver of the iron curtain and ignore critics who say their dollars prop up a repressive regime. 
 
 Isolated North Korea is expected to face a tough new U.N. Security Council resolution tightening sanctions against it following its nuclear test in January and a long-range rocket launch this month. ||||| SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea has detained a U.S. university student, the third western citizen known to be held in the isolated state, for committing a “hostile act” and wanting to “destroy the country’s unity”, it said on Friday. 
 
 Otto Frederick Warmbier, 21, of the University of Virginia, was in North Korea for a five-day New Year trip and was detained at Pyongyang airport on Jan. 2 ahead of a flight back to China, said Gareth Johnson of Young Pioneer Tours, which organized the visit. 
 
 According to the North’s official KCNA news agency, Warmbier entered North Korea as a tourist and “was caught committing a hostile act against the state”, which it said was “tolerated and manipulated by the U.S. government”. 
 
 The U.S. State Department, in a statement, said it was aware of reports that a U.S. citizen had been detained in North Korea but gave no other details, citing privacy concerns. 
 
 U.S. Rep. Brad Wenstrup, whose district includes the area where Warmbier went to high school, tweeted on Friday that his office was asking the State Department “to assist however possible in getting Mr. Warmbier home.” 
 
 Further official comment was not immediately available as U.S. government offices were closed ahead of an impending blizzard. 
 
 Johnson said China-based Young Pioneer Tours was in contact with Warmbier’s family and U.S. officials. 
 
 “We are in touch with Otto’s family, the U.S. State Department and the Embassy of Sweden in Pyongyang and doing all we can to secure his release,” Johnson told Reuters. 
 
 The Swedish Embassy represents U.S. interests in North Korea. 
 
 KCNA said Warmbier had entered the country with an “aim to destroy the country’s unity”. It did not elaborate. 
 
 According to his social media profiles, Warmbier is from Cincinnati and is an Echols Scholar, awarded to the top 7 percent of incoming first-year students at the University of Virginia, where he majors in economics with a minor in global sustainability. 
 
 Warmbier has also visited Cuba, Ireland and Israel, according to his Facebook profile. 
 
 Warmbier was detained four days before North Korea conducted its fourth nuclear test in violation of UN sanctions, which drew condemnation from its neighbors and the United States. 
 
 A friend and former high-school classmate of Warmbier, who wished to remain anonymous, told Reuters: “Otto is a wonderful, warm person who should never have to go through anything like this. ... The idea that any of this happened is crazy.” 
 
 Calls to the Warmbier home in Cincinnati, Ohio, were not immediately answered on Friday and nobody answered when a Reuters reporter knocked on the door of the house. 
 
 South Korea warned that the United States and its allies were working on further sanctions to inflict “bone-numbing pain” on North Korea after its latest nuclear test, and urged China to do its part to rein in its neighbor. 
 
 North Korea has a long history of detaining foreigners, and the U.S. and Canadian governments advise against travel there. 
 
 Pyongyang has in the past used detained U.S. citizens to extract high-profile visits from the United States, with which it has no formal diplomatic relations. 
 
 While the vast majority of tourists to North Korea are from China, roughly 6,000 westerners visit the country annually. Most are adventure-seekers curious about life behind the last sliver of the iron curtain, and ignore critics who say their dollars prop up a repressive regime. 
 
 Warmbier was on Young Pioneer’s “New Year’s Party Tour,” which, according to the itinerary on the company’s website, was to include watching fireworks in Kim Il Sung Square in the heart of Pyongyang, and an optional helicopter ride. 
 
 A South Korean-born Canadian pastor was arrested in North Korea last year and given a life sentence for subversion. This month, a Korean-American told CNN in Pyongyang he was being held by the state for spying. 
 
 In 2014, Pyongyang released three detained Americans. Last October, it freed a South Korean national with a U.S. green card after holding him for six months.
– North Korea trotted out an American college student it's held for two months Monday, and 21-year-old Otto Frederick Warmbier sobbed, bowed deeply, and pleaded for forgiveness from "every one of the millions of the Korean people." "Please! I made the worst mistake of my life," Warmbier told a press conference held "at his own request." A video obtained by CNN serves as the first glimpse of Warmbier since the alleged "hotel incident" that resulted in his detention as he was trying to leave the country. "I committed the crime of taking down a political slogan from the staff holding area of the Yanggakdo International Hotel," the University of Virginia student says. According to North Korean officials and his own statement, Warmbier's motive was much more sinister than the desire to return home with a unique souvenir. "I beg that you see how I was used and manipulated," he says, citing Z Society, the Friendship United Methodist Church of Wyoming, Ohio, and the US government as his manipulators. A North Korean official says Warmbier met with a "deaconess" of the church last year and was promised a $10,000 used car in return for sowing ideological disunity in the secretive state by taking "an important political slogan." A pastor tells CNN that Warmbier is not a member of the church. Warmbier also allegedly met with a member of Z Society, a secret philanthropic group at UVA that North Korea says is linked to the CIA, and was offered membership in exchange for completing the "mission." Reuters notes that, in the past, North Korea has used detained US citizens as leverage to get high-profile visits from the US. Warmbier's press conference comes as the UN considers new sanctions against North Korea.