"They told me that the ticket price had been reduced by the fee and asked me to send the money again. I thought something was wrong and asked for a refund, but then I was blocked and all contact was cut off."

Park, a 19-year-old who tried to buy a ticket for a popular musical, recently lost 400,000 won while attempting to receive a ticket transfer on X (formerly Twitter). Having previously received ticket transfers, Park wired the ticket price, along with personal information such as name, age, and phone number, without much suspicion. Then the seller suddenly claimed that "the booking fee has been deducted" and demanded an additional transfer. When Park, suspecting fraud, requested a refund, the seller immediately became unreachable.

College student Yoon Yedam (25) suffered similar damage. In September last year, while trying to purchase a ticket for a popular concert, Yoon attempted to get a ticket transferred via social media and was swindled out of 360,000 won. Yoon was not particularly suspicious until the seller showed a confirmation screen indicating that ticketing had been completed, but began to feel something was off when the seller repeatedly demanded that the transfer be made under Yoon's social media account nickname rather than real name, citing the "risk of three-party fraud." When the seller again asked for the money to be resent, Yoon replied, "If you give me a refund, I will transfer it again," but contact was cut off at that point. Yoon said, "Looking back now, it was nothing but nonsense to commit fraud," expressing frustration.

In September last year, a messenger chat window showing 25-year-old Yoon Yedam conversing with a seller to purchase a concert ticket. The seller said, "It wasn't deposited under the social media account name, so it won't be recognized," and demanded a second transfer. Provided by a reader.

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So-called "proxy ticketing fraud," in which scammers pretend to transfer tickets for popular performances, take the money, and then disappear, is rampant. More recently, a method has been spreading in which scammers demand additional payments under the pretext of fees, or insist that the specified depositor name does not match, and use this as a reason to demand "repeated transfers."

According to the police and other authorities on the 9th, there were 183,080 cases of cyber fraud between January and October 2024, and among them, peer-to-peer direct-transaction fraud accounted for the largest share at 44.3% (81,252 cases. A significant portion of these is believed to be proxy ticketing and scalping fraud.

Although an amendment to the Performing Arts Act that punishes scalping transactions using macros came into effect in 2024, various types of fraud are still exacerbating the damage. The methods are generally similar: scammers show a screen proving that the ticket has been booked to reassure the buyer, then disappear after receiving the money. On some online communities, as the number of people reporting that they were scammed in the same way by a particular individual has increased, victims are even discussing joint responses.

When people attempt scalping instead of going through normal ticketing procedures, half of those attempts end in fraud. According to the Anti-Corruption and Civil Rights Commission, among respondents who had experience with scalping transactions in 2024, 51.1% answered that they had "experienced fraud." Over the five years from 2019 to 2023, there were a total of 549 civil complaints related to scalping, and the number increased every year except during the COVID-19 pandemic years of 2020 and 2021.

The problem is that such cases are inevitably pushed down the priority list for investigation in practical terms. In particular, because the individual damage is usually only in the range of a few hundred thousand won, even when suspects are arrested, they are most often given light fines or suspended sentences. In fact, according to a "Survey on the Actual Conditions of Scalping Users" by the Korea Music Label Industry Association, 57.2% of victims of scalping fraud reported losses between 50,000 won and less than 200,000 won.

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As a result, critics point out that the economic gains from large-scale illegal sales exceed the level of punishment, meaning that the safety net is not functioning properly. Under the current Performing Arts Act and National Sports Promotion Act, those who engage in illegal sales using macros can be punished by up to one year in prison or a fine of up to 10 million won. Oh Yoonseong, a professor in the Department of Police Administration at Dongguk University, said, "Because ticket demand is so high, even if offenders are caught, they can still earn more than the amount of the fines," and advised, "We need alternatives such as punishing both sellers and buyers when tickets are purchased through unofficial channels."

Meanwhile, the so-called "Scalping Eradication Act" (amendments to the Performing Arts Act and the National Sports Promotion Act), which imposes an administrative fine of up to 50 times the sale amount on illegal ticket resellers, was passed by the National Assembly plenary session on January 29. Unlike the previous system, which limited punishment to cases involving the use of macros, the core of the amendment is a blanket ban on scalping transactions themselves.