Another reason the fines were smaller than expected was because of a 1 billion won ceiling on fines that was revised upward to 10 billion won starting July 28.

The unrevised 1 billion won ceiling was applied in this case because the VW had voluntarily suspended the sales of 79 of its models before July 28.

Some critics now believe VW had the intention of avoiding higher fines in mind when it halted the sales.

With a 10 billion won revised ceiling, the fines on the German carmaker would theoretically have reached 68 billion won.

On Aug. 2, the local Environment Ministry suspended the sales of 80 Audi Volkswagen models and annulled their certification for manipulating documents to cheat on the government’s emissions and noise level tests. The penalties apply to 209,000 units -- or 68 percent of all of VW cars sold here since 2007.

By Kim Ji-hyun (jemmie@heraldcorp.com)