[Anchor]

He was finally tracked down and captured, but the man is feigning ignorance, claiming he has no money to pay his fine. Because the law limits confinement to a maximum of three years even for unpaid fines amounting to hundreds of billions of won, he is currently serving an "emperor labor" sentence in prison worth 660 million won per day.

Here is an exclusive report by Reporter An Huijae.

[Reporter]

The pursuit of Mr. A began to pick up speed two months ago.

As discussions on amending the Criminal Procedure Act, including the abolition of investigative powers, gained rapid momentum, prosecutors decided they needed to prioritize capturing top defaulters while the prosecution organization still existed.

[Kim Hak-rok / Execution Division, Seoul Seobu District Prosecutors' Office: (The draft amendment to the Criminal Procedure Act) stipulated that prosecution investigators would no longer be able to carry out sentence execution duties. We concluded that long-term unsolved cases, including Mr. A, had to be processed within October....]

The reason Mr. A managed to evade capture despite being wanted for the past seven years is that, unlike during the criminal investigation stage, real-time location tracking is not easy during the sentence execution stage.

[Yeom Cheol-jin / Execution Division, Seoul Seobu District Prosecutors' Office: Without search or bank account warrants, we had no choice but to run around in person day and night. If such warrants had been permitted, (his arrest) could have been achieved in a much shorter time, not seven years.]

It was revealed that Mr. A evaded tracking by rotating multiple mobile phones and using the Telegram messenger under a Japanese alias.

At the time of his arrest, Mr. A protested by claiming that "the 5-year statute of limitations for the fine has expired." When prosecutors informed him that the statute of limitations had been extended, he reportedly dug in his heels, insisting he had no money to pay the fine.

Mr. A, who was sent back to prison after refusing to pay the fine, is now known to be serving a daily "emperor labor" stint worth 660 million won.

This is because, no matter how large the unpaid fine is, confinement in lieu of a fine can be ordered for a maximum of only three years.

[Kim Hak-rok / Execution Division, Seoul Seobu District Prosecutors' Office: It felt futile. It amounts to having 20 billion won in fines wiped out every month. I believe the (confinement in lieu of unpaid fines system) should not be abused as a means to get massive fines written off.]

As of July this year, total unpaid fines stood at approximately 5.5 trillion won. While about 10 percent of this will be reduced during Mr. A's imprisonment, tracking and recovering the remaining 90 percent remains a task for the prosecution and the soon-to-be-launched Public Prosecution Office.

(Camera: Kim Seung-tae | Video Editing: Jeon Min-gyu | Design: Park Cheon-woong)