FLASHED across television screens and pasted in village buses, posters depict Yoo Byung-eun in various disguises. The reward for tip-offs, recently increased to 500m won ($491,000), is the highest ever offered for a fugitive in South Korea. The manhunt is now in its fourth week and is a constant reminder of a tragedy that still haunts the government of Park Geun-hye.
Mr Yoo is wanted on charges of tax evasion, embezzlement and negligence in connection with the nation’s deadliest maritime disaster in decades. On April 16th the Sewol ferry sank on its way to Jeju, a popular resort, claiming the lives of almost 300 passengers, many of them schoolchildren. In a raid on the offices of Chonghaejin Marine, the firm that operated the ferry, police found an organogram with Mr Yoo at its head and a payroll in his name.
Mr Yoo is hard to pin down. He has refused many summonses since mid-May (as have his family, though his daughter has been arrested in France) and is now eluding a dragnet involving 50,000 police officers. He has long kept a low profile—he is known in South Korea as the “billionaire with no face”—while honing a dozen fuzzy identities. On his website Mr Yoo describes himself as “inventor, entrepreneur, philanthropist, environmental activist, martial artist, painter, sculptor, poet, and photographer”.
In the last of these guises he is well known, in the art world at least. Mr Yoo insists he was not involved in Chonghaejin Marine (though he confirms that his sons have a majority stake in it). He claims to have spent the past four years taking 2.6m photographs of nature from one window. His artist’s name, Ahae, is etched in stone at the Louvre in Paris, as one of its patrons; he has exhibited his prints (at his own expense) there and at the Palace of Versailles. Rumours are swirling that the Sewol’s remodelling, thought to have weakened the overloaded ferry, was for a display of Mr Yoo’s photography.
Less often on show is his leadership of the Evangelical Baptist Church, a Christian sect founded by his father-in-law in 1962 (domain name: God.com). The grisly murder-suicide of 32 followers of an offshoot cult, found bound and gagged in a factory in 1987, did not implicate Mr Yoo. But a shipping firm he owned, Semo, received money from the sect. He was later imprisoned for funnelling church funds to his business empire. Prosecutors now suspect donations from the sect’s members were also used by Chonghaejin Marine, Semo’s successor. Many employees are among the 20,000 members of Mr Yoo’s sect.
It is not unusual in South Korea for religion and business to thrive together. The Unification Church (better known as the Moonies) owns media outlets and a food conglomerate. Cho Yong-gi, the pastor of Korea’s biggest mega-church, came under scrutiny in 2011 for the alleged embezzlement of 23 billion won from church funds. The Yoo family, thought to hold 240 billion won, controls 30 companies, from paints to publishing.
The Evangelical Baptist Church decries the hunt for Mr Yoo as scapegoating. But it is grist to the mill of President Park. Her approval rating fell from 60% in early April to 46% after the ferry disaster, her lowest yet. This week the captain and crew, who abandoned ship, went on trial on murder charges. But they are “small fry”, says Pyo Changwon, a former professor at the National Police Academy. Ms Park says the Yoo family is the “root cause” of the tragedy. If he is found guilty, Mr Yoo would need to compensate victims from his personal kitty (as his shipping firm is so indebted).
The scale of the hunt, says Mr Pyo, smacks of “desperation” and of the government’s need to show it is doing its utmost. But there are risks for the government, too: last week prosecutors suggested that the manhunt is proving tough because Mr Yoo has planted cronies in ministries, the police and even the prosecution service. If it is found that his largesse did indeed reach that far, Ms Park will need to brace for the backlash.
