American detained in N. Korea: I went to do God's work

An Ohio man who spent nearly six months imprisoned in North Korea for leaving a Bible in a nightclub is home and talking about his experience -- and why he did it, CBS News' Dean Reynolds reports.

Last spring, Jeffrey Fowle went on a tour of the country the State Department warns Americans against visiting.

On a trip to a nightclub there he left behind a Korean and English Bible. He said he left the Bible to spread the seed of Christianity to the Hermit Kingdom.

The North Koreans said it was an act designed to destabilize the regime of Kim Jong Un. The Bible was found, and three days later, he was taken into custody.

"I think I was a bit of a puzzle [to them]," Fowle told CBS News. "At one point they called me a 'strange man,' which ... doesn't come as a surprise to some people I know."

Fowle said he wanted to visit the country because he was intrigued by it.

"Just the fact that it's a closed country," he said. "I want to see what makes it tick, what the people are like."

He said as far as leaving the Bible, "it was an intentional act on my part."

He said he was never mistreated - actually fed too much food - and kept in various hotel or motel rooms, but never in a cell.

He was allowed to write letters home. And he hoped the U.S. government would secure his release. He doesn't know why he was let go or why two other Americans remain in captivity.

Now more than a week after an emotional reunion with his loved ones, Fowle said it's legitimate to question him about the headaches he caused for his family and his country.

"I wouldn't do it again, but at the time I felt like I had to do it," he said. "I was doing what I thought God wanted me to do."

A truck driver for his local government in Ohio, Fowle's travels have always been on the eccentric side of the map. There were trips to Bosnia, Mongolia and Turkmenistan before North Korea.

But he won't be going anywhere for a while, he said. He's used up all his vacation time.

"I'll know when I get to heaven whether it was worth it," he said.