SEOUL, South Korea — An American serving an eight-year sentence in a labor camp in North Korea has been hospitalized after trying to kill himself, the North’s state-run Korean Central News Agency reported on Friday.

The suicide attempt by the American, Aijalon Mahli Gomes, 30, from Boston, who was arrested in North Korea in January, was “driven by his strong guilty conscience” and “his frustration with the U.S. government’s failure to free him,” the news agency said.

The Swedish Embassy in North Korea, which has had consular access to Mr. Gomes on behalf of Washington, was aware of his condition, the agency said. The United States and North Korea do not have diplomatic relations.

In April, North Korea sentenced Mr. Gomes to eight years of hard labor and fined him the equivalent of $700,000 for entering the country illegally and for “hostile acts.”

North Korea recently threatened to increase the punishment for Mr. Gomes under the country’s “wartime law,” saying worsening tensions with the United States had created a warlike situation on the Korean Peninsula.

Mr. Gomes’s motivation for entering North Korea is unclear. He had been teaching English in South Korea before his arrest in the North. In late April, he was allowed to speak to his mother by telephone.

While in South Korea, Mr. Gomes had attended rallies calling for the release of Robert Park, a fellow Christian from the United States who crossed into North Korea from China in December to call attention to the dismal conditions in the North’s prison camps. Mr. Park was expelled from North Korea after about 40 days.

Last year, North Korea also arrested two American journalists, Laura Ling and Euna Lee, and sentenced them to 12 years of hard labor for illegally entering the North. But the women were pardoned and released five months later after former President Bill Clinton visited North Korea and its leader, Kim Jong-il.