Culture ministry reports 15 to police over scalping of K-pop, sports tickets
Fans roam around Busan Asiad Main Stadium, where BTS' concert took place, June 12. Yonhap
The culture ministry has referred 15 people to police for allegedly reselling large quantities of sports and K-pop concert tickets at inflated prices, including some marked up to eight times their original value, officials said Wednesday.
The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism said the cases were identified through an analysis of online reports and monitoring data on illegal ticket resales between Jan. 5 and June 16. The investigation focused on activity on major secondhand trading platforms, where certain accounts repeatedly sold multiple tickets or listed dozens of seats for specific events.
One seller allegedly resold 110 professional baseball tickets during the period, while another sold 54 tickets for a single game in April. Among 11 individuals involved in sports ticket resales, total estimated sales reached 36.84 million won ($23,970). In one case, a ticket with a face value of 150,000 won was resold for 350,000 won.
Authorities also found suspected violations involving high-demand concerts with strict purchase limits, including BTS' "ARIRANG" world tour shows in Busan and Seventeen's "New" world tour encore shows in Incheon. Despite one-ticket-per-person restrictions, one seller was found to have resold more than 10 tickets.
In another case, a ticket for a concert by S.Coups X Mingyu, a unit of Seventeen, was resold for 1.2 million won, about eight times the face value of 143,000 won. Four individuals involved in concert ticket resales were estimated to have sold a combined 11.64 million won worth of tickets.
The ministry said the scale and pattern of sales exceeded normal person-to-person transfers, raising suspicion that some tickets may have been obtained using automated programs or other illicit methods.
Officials said they will continue to monitor bulk and repeated resale activity in cooperation with online platforms, ticket agencies and professional sports organizations, and will refer suspected cases to law enforcement authorities.
The ministry also said it is preparing additional enforcement measures ahead of the revised laws on curbing unfair ticket transactions taking effect Aug. 28. The amendments will ban all illegal resales regardless of whether automated tools were used and allow fines of up to 50 times the resale value.