A man who spent seven years on the run after failing to pay a fine of about 650 billion won ($470 million) has been arrested by prosecutors.
The Seoul Western District Prosecutors' Office arrested the man, identified only as A and in his 50s, in Seoul's Yeongdeungpo district on the 21st of last month, according to reporting by The Seoul Economic Daily on the 1st. He had long failed to pay the fine.
A was the head of transport operations for a ring that smuggled more than 40,000 kilograms of gold bars out of Hong Kong to Japan. In 2019, a lower court sentenced him to two years and six months in prison along with a fine of about 1.3 trillion won.
An appeals court sharply reduced the sentence and released him. The fine was also cut roughly in half, to 662.3 billion won. A then disappeared without paying and remained in hiding.
Prosecutors picked up suspicious signs through people close to A and confirmed that he had met someone at a cafe in Seoul's Jongno district in July this year. They then traced his movements backward and succeeded in arresting him.
After a recalculation process, the fine A must pay was set at a total of 653.7 billion won. Immediately after his arrest, A argued that the five-year statute of limitations on the fine had expired, and when that claim was rejected, he refused to pay, saying he had no assets left, according to sources.
Under the law, which provides for detention in a labor facility when a fine goes unpaid, A was sent to prison immediately. Because the detention period is capped regardless of the size of the unpaid fine, however, he is expected to be released in about two years and eight months at the longest. That works out to a labor credit of about 20 billion won a month.
