Hire a ticket buyer: the new way to see concerts

By Yeo Ye-rim

Tickets for K-pop concerts, like other popular concerts around the world, are quite expensive, but they are still in high demand.

For popular K-pop boy band BigBang’s August concert, tickets went on sale over three days from July 14. Standing tickets cost around 110,000 won ($98) and all 60,000 were sold within 10 minutes each day.

It is no wonder there are so many ticket scalpers online, trying to resell tickets at a price at least three times the original. The highest “reselling” price of the BigBang concert so far is 2,000,000 won.

This has spawned a new part-time job, in which people are hired to buy concert tickets and get paid about 100,000 won.

“Ticket scalpers usually sell a ticket worth 100,000 won for over 300,000 won, but to hire ticket buyers, I only have to pay an additional 100,000 won on top of the usual ticket price,” said a visitor to a concert of K-pop boy band Infinite who hired a ticket buyer.

There are even agencies that specialize in buying tickets for those wishing to go to a K-pop concert. They first receive 20,000 won to 40,000 won in fees from the customers. Then they hire an agent to buy the tickets. If the agent succeeds, he gets paid.

According to an entertainment agency, hiring people to buy tickets is no different from ticket scalping. The money the ticket buyers make has nothing to do with those who worked hard to prepare for the concerts, the agency said.