Korea's ticket scalping law: what's banned, and why 170 people were referred

What is banned: improper purchase and improper resale

• Outside the scope. The ministry says movie tickets and accommodation vouchers are neither performances nor sports events and so are not covered; it plans a separate amendment for movie scalping.^2,3
• Fan meetings. The ministry's Q&A treats a typical fan meeting as a "performance accompanying product sales or promotion," which the Performance Act excludes, so it is not covered.^3,4
• Presale rights and accounts. The ministry says selling fan-club presale rights or accounts can also be punished as improper resale if, on the facts, it amounts to brokering at a premium habitually or as a business without consent.³
• "Variant" sales. The ministry says it confirmed through outside legal advice and the Ministry of Government Legislation that deals disguised as fees, handling charges or bundled merchandise can be punished if they are improper trades in substance.^1,10

Article 4-2 of the revised Performance Act says no one may engage in improper purchase or improper resale of performance tickets, passes, discount vouchers or exchange vouchers. Improper purchase means buying tickets for resale by getting around or disrupting the fair purchase process set by the original seller; improper resale means selling or brokering tickets, habitually or as a business and without the seller's consent, for more than you paid. Article 6-2 of the National Sports Promotion Act sets the same rules for sports tickets. According to the ministry's Q&A, buying without a macro and then reselling at a premium can also be punished if those conditions are met. Selling at or below what you paid is not improper resale, and these two laws do not punish people who buy from scalpers. The ministry says a single sale of one ticket is in principle hard to treat as habitual or commercial, and when the enforcement decrees took effect it said transfers "within the common-sense range of ordinary citizens" would be judged reasonably. Organizers can still cancel tickets under their own terms if those terms ban transfers, regardless of the law.

When it took effect, and the penalties

The revised Performance Act (Act No. 21397) was promulgated on February 27, 2026 and, under its addendum, took effect six months later on August 28. The revised National Sports Promotion Act took effect the same day, and the two enforcement decrees with the detailed rules passed the Cabinet on August 18 and applied from August 28. Improper purchase or resale can bring up to one year in prison or a fine of up to 10 million won, and money or other gains from the violation can be confiscated or their value collected. Separately, the culture minister can impose a surcharge of up to 50 times the sale amount on improper resellers. The decree's schedule scales the surcharge from 2 to 50 times by number of tickets and amount; it applies to performance sales of 50,000 won or more covering two or more tickets, and to sports sales of 20,000 won or more covering two or more tickets. For a single ticket, a surcharge of up to five times the sale amount applies only where the minister sets one by public notice. It can be cut by up to 50% if the gain was minor or the seller cooperated with the investigation. Tipster rewards are up to 50 million won for reporting improper purchase, and up to 50% of the surcharge for reporting improper resale.

Who enforces it

Reports go through the integrated scalping report site (www.culture.go.kr/singo); the Korea Creative Content Agency handles performances and the Korea Sports Promotion Foundation handles sports. These reporting agencies can ask ticket sellers and resale platforms for purchase and sales records, buyer and seller details, access logs, and related posts and messages, and can hand that data to investigators if they suspect a violation. The culture minister imposes surcharges; police handle criminal cases. In May 2026 the ministry and the National Police Agency's National Office of Investigation held a macro-detection briefing with ticket sellers for 70 cyber investigators from across the country, and the police said they are widening probes to organized operations split into program development, account harvesting, proxy booking and resale. The ministry is also running on-site checks with police at every KBO postseason game from October 14. Money Today noted that the up-to-50× penalty surcharge applied to sellers does not apply to platforms; a platform that fails to hand over requested data faces a fine of up to 5 million won.

What the 170-person referral is

• Volume of reports. About 68,000 reports came in between August 28 and October 1, about 2,000 a day, roughly 17 times the previous year's rate. Of about 45,000 valid reports after removing duplicates, 30,000 led to posts being hidden with the platforms' cooperation.^1,10
• Breakdown. 121 in pro sports, 49 in performances. About 68% (115 people) were reported over listings posted on Ticketbay.^1,10
• Scale. An estimated 11,032 tickets worth about 1.029 billion won (about 929 million won in sports, about 99.5 million won in performances). In one case a single person offered more than 1,000 tickets across multiple posts, and in some cases the tickets offered added up to over 100 million won.¹
• Thresholds. For sports, the bar was total listed sales of 4 million won or more during the period; for performances, five or more tickets listed, a confirmed completed sale, or suspected habitual trading. Four "variant sale" cases were included.¹

After analyzing reports filed with the two reporting agencies, the ministry on October 6, 2026 asked investigators to look into 170 people showing signs of scalping, such as selling above face value or in bulk. It is the first referral since the revised law took effect. All figures below come from the ministry, and the sales amounts and ticket counts are estimates. This page does not identify anyone, and a referral is not a finding of guilt.

What it means for overseas fans

• Resale sites. About 68% of those referred were reported over listings on Ticketbay, a Korean resale platform. Ticketbay warned that regulating only domestic platforms could push trading onto overseas social media, open chats and private communities.^1,12
• Proxy buying and accounts. Using stolen accounts to beat per-person limits is an official example of improper purchase, and selling presale rights or accounts can, depending on the facts, count as improper resale.³
• Cancellation risk. If the organizer's terms ban transfers, tickets can be canceled whether or not the law was broken. For the BTS concerts, the organizer said it monitored for trades violating its booking policy and canceled tickets when buyers failed to explain them.^3,7

The ministry's Q&A says the law applies territorially. Foreign residents of Korea who trade improperly on Korean platforms are covered, but the two laws do not apply when foreigners or people living abroad buy or resell improperly outside Korea. According to Dailian, the ministry said it would be difficult to apply the revised law to overseas platforms, and just before the law took effect, X (formerly Twitter) accounts that had openly offered proxy ticketing deleted posts or went private. The two laws do not punish people who buy scalped tickets, but that is no guarantee a resold ticket will get you in. Ahead of BTS's Gwanghwamun and Goyang concerts in March 2026, the ministry warned that strict ID checks made entry with a scalped ticket practically impossible and that fraud risk was high, and urged fans to buy from official sellers. This section summarizes the sources and is not legal advice; check the organizer's terms and ask a professional about any specific situation.

Background: from the 2023 macro ban to the 2026 overhaul

According to the ministry, the Minor Offenses Act of 1973 only allowed a fine of up to 200,000 won for on-the-spot scalping, which made online scalping hard to police. So in 2023 the Performance Act was amended to punish buying tickets with macros and reselling them at a premium with up to one year in prison or a 10 million won fine; that provision took effect on March 22, 2024. A matching amendment to the National Sports Promotion Act for sports tickets passed the National Assembly on February 29, 2024. Citing ministry data at the time, Aju Business Daily reported that scalping reports rose from 359 in 2020 to 4,224 in 2022. As critics pointed out that only macro cases could be punished, the ministry said in September 2024 that, accepting a recommendation from the Anti-Corruption and Civil Rights Commission, it was considering a ban regardless of macros, a new "improper purchase" offense and tougher penalties (up to three years in prison or a 30 million won fine). The revised law promulgated in February 2026 brought in the macro-neutral ban, surcharges, tipster rewards and confiscation. Under the current text on the National Law Information Center, however, the criminal penalty is up to one year in prison or a 10 million won fine, and the resale test is still "the price you paid."