SEOUL, South Korea — State prosecutors equipped with metal detectors raided the Seoul residence of former President Chun Doo-hwan on Tuesday in a search for assets. Mr. Chun, the former military dictator, owes South Korea 167.5 billion won, or $150 million, in fines but claims to be broke.

In a Supreme Court court ruling in 1997, Mr. Chun, now 82, was ordered to return to the state 220 billion won he had illegally accumulated through bribery from big businesses during his eight and a half years in power in the 1980s. He has so far paid only a quarter of the amount. In his last payment, he handed in $2,680 he said he had collected as a lecture fee.

Mr. Chun has rarely appeared in public since he stepped down in 1988 and entered a Buddhist monastery. In the 1997 verdict, he was also convicted of sedition for his role in the 1979 military coup that brought him to power and a 1980 military crackdown that left hundreds of people dead in the southwestern city of Kwangju. He initially was sentenced to death, but the penalty was reduced to a life imprisonment. He was later pardoned and freed.

On Tuesday, a team of 90 prosecutors, tax collectors and other investigators ransacked Mr. Chun’s home in eastern Seoul. Television footage showed them hauling away paintings, porcelain and expensive artifacts.