Korea Railroad Corporation (KORAIL) and Suseo high-speed rail (SRT) operator SR Co. detected a total of 62 scalping transaction cases during this year's Lunar New Year holiday period.
On the 8th, KORAIL said it requested an investigation into 26 scalping transaction cases involving Lunar New Year tickets last month, and SR requested probes into 36 cases with the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport's Railway Special Judicial Police (railway police) and the Korean National Police Agency.
The matters KORAIL asked investigators to handle were ▲ 10 cases of selling tickets with a markup ▲ nine cases of brokering that induced proxy purchases ▲ and seven cases caught using the "mystery shopper" method. A mystery shopper is a method in which a KORAIL employee personally poses as a scalper buyer on online secondhand transaction platforms to identify scalper sellers.
SR detected and requested investigations into ▲ 13 cases of ticket transfer ▲ eight cases of selling with a markup ▲ and three cases of proxy ticket purchases. All were matters SR verified based on tips submitted through its online scalping tip-off channel.
The number of investigation requests related to illegal ticket transaction during this year's Lunar New Year dropped significantly compared with 207 during last year's Lunar New Year (KORAIL 25, SR 182) and 148 during Chuseok (KORAIL 58, SR 90). After last year's revision of the Railroad Business Act allowed the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport (MOLIT) to obtain the personal information of illegal ticket sellers directly from related agencies and organizations, crackdowns on scalping tightened, which is seen as reducing attempts to transact.
Those caught transacting train tickets as scalped goods can face fines of up to 10 million won, or a penalty of up to 200,000 won, detention, or minor fines.