North Korea says a Korean-Canadian pastor, who has been detained in the North for 30 months, held a meeting with the Swedish ambassador in Pyongyang on Friday.

The North's official Korean Central News Agency said the acting Swedish ambassador met with Lim Hyeon-soo, who has been serving a sentence since December 2015 for carrying out hostile acts against the regime.

The KCNA said Lee talked about his health condition and told the Swedish official to pass on to the Canadian government his plea for active efforts to resolve his situation.

Swedish Ambassador Torkel Stiernlof also met with Lim in Pyongyang in February, but North Korean media did not disclose this fact at that time.

Considering the change this time around, some speculate Pyongyang could release the pastor in the near future.

Just last month, American college student Otto Warmbier died just days after he was released in a coma from the North, where he was held captive for 17 months.

The international community has since strongly called for Lim's release.

The pastor visited North Korea around a hundred times since 1997, carrying out humanitarian projects for the North Korean people.

He was arrested in January 2015, while traveling from Rason city to the capital Pyongyang. In December that year, he was sentenced to life with hard labor on charges of conspiring to overthrow the North Korean regime.

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