[All] Fans cry over ‘picketing’… Im Young-woong concert ticket prices soar to 5 million won
If there is a fierce competition among singers to secure concert halls, a 'picketing' war (a fiercely competitive ticketing) breaks out among fans. This leads to the side effect of black market tickets, with tickets priced at 100,000 won being traded for up to several million won.
Ticket scalping, where tickets are easily obtained using macro programs and then resold at a premium, is a chronic problem in the entertainment industry. As fans' desire to go to a concert grows, the price of tickets on the black market also skyrockets. Last May, all tickets for Lim Young-woong's concert were sold out as soon as ticket sales opened, and the price of black market tickets soared to 5 million won. At the Yonsei University festival 'Akaraka Onnuri' held in May last year, popular girl groups such as Espa, Ive, and Le Seraphim participated, and black market tickets were traded for 250,000 to 350,000 won, which is 15 to 20 times the regular price of 17,000 won. Jang Beom-jun also made headlines early this year when he canceled all of his ticket sales when black market tickets became rampant. The number of reports received by the Korea Creative Content Agency's Ticket Scalping Reporting Center increased sharply from 359 in 2020 to 2,161 in 2023.
As the situation became more serious, the law was revised. The revised performance law that went into effect in March stipulates that anyone who uses a macro program to reserve tickets and then sells them on the black market will be subject to up to one year in prison and a fine of up to 10 million won. However, there were criticisms that this would be ineffective because it would be difficult to prove that a macro program was used even if black market trading was detected. In response, the National Human Rights Commission recommended to the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism in September that the act of selling tickets on the black market itself should be punished regardless of whether a macro program was used, and the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism is currently working on a related revision.