Another Surge in Scalping... Illegal Train Ticket Trading 'Helpless' Ahead of Seollal

Only Fines Under 10 Million Won Without Enforcement Regulations... Measures Limited to Reservation Limits and Post Deletion Requests

[Asia Economy Reporter Lee Jung-yoon] "Round-trip KTX train tickets from Dongdaegu to Seoul on the 24th-25th are on sale." "Anyone looking to buy SRT train tickets from Busan to Suseo on the 25th?"

With the Lunar New Year holiday just over two weeks away, the battle for train tickets has begun again. On secondhand trading sites, 'scalpers' targeting those who couldn't get tickets are rampant. Due to legal shortcomings, proper crackdowns are not being carried out.

On the morning of the 13th, by entering keywords like KTX and SRT on secondhand trading sites such as Naver Junggonara, posts selling train tickets for the Lunar New Year holiday can be easily found.

Reservations for KTX homecoming train tickets were made on the 7th-8th, and for SRT on the 9th-10th, but due to high competition, scalpers posted these listings targeting people who failed to get tickets. Scalpers are selling tickets at a premium of about 5,000 to 10,000 KRW.

They use multiple accounts and macro (automatic repetition) programs to purchase large quantities of tickets. On platforms like the Chrome App Store, one can download train ticket reservation macro programs with a simple search.

The current Railroad Business Act stipulates that anyone who habitually or commercially sells tickets at a price higher than the purchase price or mediates such sales shall be fined up to 10 million KRW. However, the law only includes penalty provisions and lacks detailed regulations on enforcement authority. When penalty provisions for scalping were established in 2011, enforcement methods should have been prepared, but the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport did not do so.

Despite scalping of homecoming tickets being a chronic problem every holiday season, the number of crackdowns is always '0'. The railway authorities limit the number of tickets purchasable per reservation to a maximum of 6 and a maximum of 12 per person to prevent hoarding and scalping.

However, without enforcement authority, they are powerless against scalping openly conducted online. According to a Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport official, the only measure is to monitor and request the deletion of posts on sites where scalping occurs.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.