Suspected scalping transactions of domestic train tickets during the Lunar New Year and Chuseok holidays last year increased about threefold from the year before.
On the 15th, Democratic Party of Korea lawmaker Moon Jin-seok of the National Assembly Land Infrastructure and Transport Committee said, citing materials on crackdowns on fraudulent ticket transactions submitted by the Korea Railroad Corporation (KORAIL) and Super Rapid Train (SR), that suspected scalping transactions totaled 355 cases last year. KORAIL accounted for 83 cases and SR for 272, and the matters were referred to the railroad police and local police stations for investigation.
That is nearly triple the 119 total cases (12 during Lunar New Year and 107 during Chuseok) the year before, in just one year.
This increase is analyzed to be influenced by an amendment to the Railroad Business Act that passed the National Assembly ahead of Lunar New Year last year. The core of the amendment is that when there is a violation of the prohibition on fraudulent ticket sales (including suspected cases), the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport can directly request the provision of personal information from related institutions and organizations, such as online secondhand transaction platforms. Institutions and organizations must comply unless there is a justifiable reason not to.
Accordingly, KORAIL and SR, which had faced limitations in cracking down on scalping transactions due to a lack of direct enforcement authority, can now obtain sellers' personal details through the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport from platforms such as Karrot Market, Joonggonara, and Bungaejangter and use them for investigation requests, enabling swifter sanctions.
However, because train tickets can currently be issued without a name, a limitation remains in clearly determining whether a purchaser resold a ticket at a markup when the buyer and the actual user are different.
In response, rail agencies are reviewing measures to gradually reduce nonmember (unnamed) ticket reservations and strengthen member-based reservation systems to more clearly distinguish between purchasers and actual users.
Lawmaker Moon Jin-seok said, "Scalping transactions of train tickets, which cause significant inconvenience to the public's transportation use ahead of the national holidays of Lunar New Year and Chuseok, must be eradicated," adding, "There needs to be discussion on institutional improvements, such as granting enforcement authority to related institutions like KORAIL and SR."