
"Investigation revealed that at the instigation of the NK News and other anti-DPRK media he handed over several times the data and photos he collected and analyzed while combing Pyongyang by making use of the identity card of a foreign student," a Reuters report stated quoting the North's Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).
Sigley, who had been held in North Korea since June 25, admitted his "spying acts" and repeatedly asked for a pardon, the report said quoting KCNA.
Sigley, expelled from North Korea on Thursday, arrived in Tokyo via Beijing later the same day.
Sigley - one of a handful of Westerners living and studying in Pyongyang - disappeared without a trace around June 23, prompting concerns about his fate.
For days his family received no word about his whereabouts or wellbeing, stoking fears he may be the latest in a long line of foreigners to be tangled up in North Korea's police state.
Sigley ran a number of social media sites, which usually had a stream of apolitical content about everyday life in one of the world's most secretive nations.
(With inputs from Reuters)