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North Korea said Friday it was holding a U.S. student for committing an unspecified “hostile act,” the latest in a series of detained American tourists and missionaries that Pyongyang has at times used to try to win diplomatic leverage with Washington.

Otto Frederick Warmbier, an undergraduate student at the University of Virginia, was accused of being manipulated by the U.S. government, according to a brief report from the Korean Central News Agency. The report provided no details of Mr. Warmbier’s actions other than to allege that he entered the country “for the purpose of bringing down the foundation of its single-minded unity.”

Mr. Warmbier was detained in Pyongyang on Jan. 2, according to Troy Collins of Young Pioneer Tours, the tour company that took him to North Korea. Mr. Collins declined to provide further details but said Mr. Warmbier’s family had been informed of his detention.

A deal that sent $1.7 billion in U.S. funds to Iran, announced alongside the freeing of five Americans from Iranian jails, has emerged as a new flashpoint amid a claim in Tehran that the transaction amounted to a ransom payment.

The U.S. Treasury Department wired the money to Iran around the same time its theocratic government allowed three American prisoners to fly out of Tehran on Sunday aboard a Dassault Falcon jet owned by the Swiss air force.

The prisoner swap also involved freedom for two other Americans held in Iran as well as for seven Iranians charged or convicted by the U.S.

The announcements coincided with the implementation of the nuclear agreement with Iran, lifting international economic sanctions in exchange for Iran curtailing its nuclear program.

The $1.7 billion financial settlement ended a 35-year legal saga that centered on a purchase of U.S. arms by Iran’s last monarch, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, that were never delivered because of the Iranian revolution in 1979.

The White House described the settlement as a victory for taxpayers, arguing that the U.S. was likely to lose in arbitration under way in The Hague, Netherlands, and could have been held liable for billions more if the process had dragged on.