Scalpers pocket 1.1 billion won selling BTS tickets, until their operation is exposed…

Scalping market infiltrates social media, targeting top-tier artists

Online social media has become a hotbed for illegal ticket scalping. More than 100 ticket-sale posts appeared each month on a single account alone, revealing an organized and clandestine illicit market that has evaded the monitoring systems of established secondhand trading platforms.

An analysis of 2024–2026 ticket-scalping monitoring data obtained from the Korea Popular Music Performance Industry Association by Jung Joon-ho, a lawmaker from the Democratic Party of Korea and a member of the National Assembly’s Land, Infrastructure and Transport Committee, found that 931 sales posts had been flagged from a single ticket-scalping account on X (formerly Twitter) between January and August this year.

The account’s estimated sales totaled about 216.98 million won. The combined sales of the 10 accounts with the most posts during the same period are estimated to have far exceeded 1.1 billion won.

The 10 accounts published a total of 6,020 illegal posts. They were found to have made enormous illicit profits by reselling concert tickets that typically cost between 150,000 and 230,000 won, adding premiums ranging from 16,000 won to as much as 37,000 won.

The main targets were top-tier stars from South Korea and abroad. Posts selling tickets to BTS concerts ranked first by a wide margin, with 8,912 posts, followed by NCT Dream with 7,774, DAY6 with 6,577, NCT WISH with 5,895 and Lim Young-woong with 5,145.

Jung said, "Ticket scalping, once confined to secondhand trading platforms, has recently become increasingly dispersed across and driven underground by social media." He strongly urged the government to pursue fundamental institutional improvements, including stronger monitoring and effective legal sanctions, saying, "As criminal methods become more sophisticated, the government urgently needs to strengthen monitoring and introduce effective legal penalties."