Korea cracks down on rampant ticket scalping

Anti-scalping campaigners in South Korea are celebrating a victory after the country’s government pledged that new legislation to effectively outlaw the use of “macro tools” to buy tickets will come into effect this Friday (5 April).

Policymakers at the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism are determined to combat the rampant resale which has been blighting shows in the country. As a result, they have revised the Public Performance Act so that scalpers now face up to one year in prison or a 10 million won (€6,880) fine for breaking the law.

Campaigners had complained that South Korea’s existing laws were antiquated, as the relevant legislation dated back half a century, long before digital ticketing and the nefarious use of bots had been contemplated.

“Ticket scalping threatens the basis of the market order for our culture and sports, and we (the ministry) will take severe actions against it,” says culture minister Yu In-chon. “The Culture Ministry will implement various policies that can root out and prevent ticket scalping, thus restoring the order in the distribution system of culture and sports fields.”

As part of the reforms, the culture ministry is now operating a website, and phone line where fans and concert organisers can report illegal ticket sales.

More than 50 percent of the tickets from sold-out performances typically go to scalpers.

Recently, Record Label Industry Association of Korea chair Yoon Dong-hwan told The Korea Herald that more than 50% of the tickets from sold-out performances typically go to scalpers – taking a huge potential revenue stream away from the K-pop business which invests so heavily in its talent, but also affecting the likes of the classical music sector and theatre productions. “Sometimes they take up more than 70% of the seats,” says Yoon, observing that the introduction of bots has accelerated the growth of dubious resale practices.

The Korea Herald has published a series of articles about the issue. Highlighting the scale of the profits being made by the online touts, in a December 2023 story, the newspaper said that resale tickets for popular boy band, The Boyz, were trading for as much as 7 m won (€4,812), while VIP seats for Sung Si-kyung were priced at 1,199,900 won (€825). The original ticket price for both was about 150,000 won (€103).

Although Yoon’s 50% of inventory claim is not backed up by official numbers, statistics show that ticket scalping in the country has been rising dramatically, with the Korea Creative Content Agency revealing that reports of illegal ticket sales went from just 359 in 2020 to 4,224 in 2022. A survey by Yoon’s label association stated that 32.8% of 19-29-year-olds had bought a ticket from a scalper at least once. The same question posed to respondents in their 30s and 40s resulted in 25% admitting they had purchased from touts.

On the talent side of things, performers have been introducing their own terms and conditions to try to stamp out scalping. K-pop star IU threatens a lifetime fan club ban for anyone illegally selling a ticket to her shows, while having cancelled concerts in January because of scalping, singer Jang Beom-june partnered with Hyundai Card to use NFTs to thwart the touts for his February appearance at Understage in Seoul.

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