BTS's ARIRANG Tour Led South Korea's Scalping Reports, and the Real Numbers Are Far Worse

BTS's ARIRANG world tour racked up 102 scalping complaints on South Korea's official reporting board between last September and August 27, the highest of any concert in that period. But the number that actually matters is 1,868: that's how many illegal resale posts the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism confirmed were circulating for the same tour, more than 18 times the official complaint count.

The figures were disclosed on the 10th by lawmaker Jeong Jun-ho of the Democratic Party of Korea, who sits on the National Assembly's Culture, Sports and Tourism Committee and obtained the data from the Korea Creative Content Agency (KOCCA).

The full ranking

Behind BTS in the past-year tally: Psy's Ssomak Show (88 reports), BIGBANG's 20th anniversary concert (69), Im Young-woong's national tour (64), DAY6's special concert (51), Oasis's Korea show (48), and The Weeknd's Korea show (44).

Zoom out to the past three years and the list shifts. Na Hoon-a's retirement concert led with 233 reports, followed by Bruno Mars's 2023 Korea show (204), virtual group PLAVE's fan concert (180), g.o.d's concert (177), and Psy again with 161.

In total, KOCCA received 7,639 scalping reports from January 2023 through last month. Music events accounted for 5,751 of those, 75.3% of the total. Fan meetings and film premieres made up 15.6%, musicals 5.5%, and gaming events 3.6%.

As for where the scalping happens: 79.8% of reported transactions took place on secondhand platforms like Karrot Market, TicketBay, Bunjang, and Joonggonara. The remaining 20.2% were flagged on social media, including X, Facebook, Instagram, and Telegram.

Four referrals in four years

Here's where the story gets uncomfortable for the government. Despite 7,639 reports since 2023, the Ministry of Culture referred just four cases to police between 2022 and now, two in 2024, two in 2026, targeting a total of 11 accounts.

Jeong's explanation: only about 10% of submitted reports include enough ticket-specific detail, like booking numbers, to actually be actionable. The rest don't clear the evidentiary bar.

South Korea's so-called "Anti-Scalping Act" took effect on August 28, introducing fines of up to 50 times the resale price, with half of collected penalties paid out as rewards to informants. Whether that changes anything is an open question. Jeong pointed out that overseas scalpers are already exploiting a territoriality loophole, selling tickets to foreign nationals and overseas residents through Chinese and U.S.-based sites, outside the reach of Korean law.

The methods are getting slicker, too. Jeong flagged one increasingly common tactic: bundling overpriced tickets with merchandise sales to disguise the transaction as a goods purchase. "The enforcement tools we have now have clear limits," he said, calling for "effective new measures to crack down on emerging scalping methods" that current law simply wasn't designed to catch.