South Korean police said on September 16 that they had referred a man in his 30s to prosecutors for reselling 8,967 concert and sports tickets over seven years and seven months, netting 2.4 billion won ($1.7 million) in sales.
The Gyeonggi Bukbu Provincial Police Agency, which covers the area north of Seoul, tracked the operation from September 2018 until the man's arrest in April 2026. About two-thirds of that total, 1.6 billion won, was profit. He had not held a salaried job since finishing university, police said, living entirely off resale margins.
Macro Programs And Borrowed Accounts Beat Ordinary Fans
The case helps explain why tickets for major tours vanish within seconds, no matter how fast ordinary fans click.
Police said the suspect ran automated purchasing programs, known as macros, to place orders faster than any person could, and bought through accounts registered to relatives to multiply his odds in a single queue. He learned the trade in what officers described as the country's largest ticket-resale group chat, since forcibly shut down.
To avoid a trail, he changed delivery addresses, transferred digital tickets online, and in some cases handed over entry wristbands in person outside venues.
Police Traced Markups Of Up To 30 Times
The steepest markup traced involved BTS: a ticket bought for 110,000 won to the group's 2019 concert at Seoul's Jamsil Sports Complex was resold for 3 million won, about 27 times the price. A 2025 fan-meeting ticket for the boy band Seventeen followed the same pattern, rising from 110,000 won to 1.8 million won.
Sports and touring acts were targets too. A 400,000 won ticket to the 2024 friendly between Team K League and Tottenham Hotspur was resold for 1.65 million won, and a 250,000 won ticket to Bruno Mars' 2023 Seoul concert went for 1.2 million won. Across every transaction police reviewed, the maximum markup was roughly 30 times face value.
A Hidden USB Drive Rebuilt The Paper Trail
The investigation nearly lost its evidence. After police broke up a separate, larger scalping ring in March 2026 and the arrests made news, the suspect wiped his computer and phone and shut down a registered business he had used as a cover.
The cleanup fell short. Officers searching his home recovered a USB drive holding concealed operating records, and digital forensics restored what he had deleted, including a phone calendar packed with concert dates and search histories on resale methods and macro programs, some of it researched using generative AI tools.
Investigators went after the proceeds as well as the conduct. The suspect had used his profits to buy one apartment, since sold, and two commercial properties in Gyeonggi Province. A court granted a pre-indictment order freezing 1.26 billion won in real estate and bonds, and he was referred to prosecutors on a charge of obstruction of business.
He denied wrongdoing. "I didn't know ticket scalping was illegal, and I have faithfully paid my taxes. I haven't harmed anyone," he told investigators.
Korea's Revised Performance Act Closes The Macro Loophole
Byun Min-sun, who heads the agency's cyber investigation division, rejected that framing. "Ticket scalping is not simply a private transaction in which someone resells a ticket at a markup," Byun said. "It is a crime that deprives K-pop fans of a fair chance to attend performances and an unfair practice that drives up prices for ordinary consumers." Byun added that police would keep pursuing other suspects and tracing criminal proceeds to restore order to the entertainment market.
The legal ground shifted while this case was being built. A revised Public Performance Act took effect on August 28, 2026, dropping the requirement that investigators show macro software was used at some point in a transaction. Habitual or commercial resale above face value without the seller's consent is now an offense on its own, as is bypassing fair-purchase systems by technical means.
Violators face up to one year in prison and fines of up to 10 million won, plus confiscation of illicit gains. The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism can separately impose administrative penalties of two to 50 times the total sale amount, scaled to the quantity and price of tickets involved. Ticketing platforms must now verify buyer identities, offer reporting tools, and remove flagged listings within 24 hours, or 10 in urgent cases. Whistleblowers can collect up to 50 million won.
The law still has gaps: movie tickets, accommodation vouchers, and fan-meeting tickets fall outside its scope, one reason the Gyeonggi case was referred under obstruction of business rather than the performance law alone.
Taiwan Fines Scalpers Up To 50 Times Face Value
Taiwan moved earlier, and in some respects harder. Taiwan's parliament, the Legislative Yuan, amended the Development of the Cultural and Creative Industries Act on May 12, 2023, after repeated complaints that K-pop and domestic concert tickets were being swept up by automated buyers within moments of release.
Under the amended act, reselling an arts or cultural performance ticket above face value draws a fine of 10 to 50 times the resale price, capped at NT$3 million. Using false information, computer programs, or similar equipment to obtain tickets, reservations, or vouchers carries up to three years in prison. The amendments also created a whistleblower reward and called for a government-supervised platform for legitimate ticket exchanges.
Enforcement has followed. Taipei city authorities defended their penalty structure in September 2025, reminding residents that any markup on a resold ticket is illegal, not only a steep one.
For fans in Taipei, Seoul, and Tokyo, the Gyeonggi case attaches a number to a familiar experience: one person, working alone with software and a handful of borrowed accounts, absorbed 8,967 seats that would otherwise have reached buyers at face value.
