[Anchor]
Perhaps due to the short holiday, it is reportedly even harder to secure train tickets this Chuseok. People have been flocking to station ticket counters in hopes of finding canceled tickets. Meanwhile, cases of fraud are continuing as people try to secure tickets through secondhand trading platforms.
Reporter Jeong Jiyeon has the details.
[Reporter]
People are gathered in front of the ticket counters at Seoul Station.
[Station Staff: They are all sold out. There are also a lot of people on the reservation waiting list right now, so....]
[Kim Sung-shik and Kim Da-yeon / Returning home to Daegu: I managed to get a ticket, but my wife has to come down separately on the day before Chuseok, so I came to see if there were any standing-room tickets available, but as expected, there are none.]
Let us take a look at the ticket vending machine.
This is a train bound for Pohang from Seoul.
Starting from the day before Chuseok when the holiday begins, all seats, including standing-room tickets, are completely sold out.
This Chuseok holiday train reservation rate stands at 84%, which is 21.3 percentage points higher than last Chuseok, when travel was dispersed over a 7-day holiday.
[Song Ji-min / Returning home to Changwon, South Gyeongsang Province: It was so difficult this time. Everything is completely sold out. Since everyone is coming back up on Sunday of all days, it seems even harder to secure tickets. It is a situation where you have to go to war....]
Posts asking to buy KTX tickets are continuously being uploaded on secondhand trading platforms. Among them was a family of four who sent 400,000 won to a scammer preying on this desperation and never received their tickets.
[Returning home to Busan: I offered a slightly higher price because I really wanted to get them. When the ticket did not arrive and I tried calling, it turned out to be a burner phone, and they became unreachable.]
An IT company has developed and launched a free service program that notifies users when a canceled ticket becomes available after entering the desired train schedule.
[Lee Ho-se / Vacant seat alarm service developer: A friend sometimes has to travel from Daejeon to Seoul for business, and every time, there are no KTX tickets.... I thought it would be great to have at least an alarm app that tells you "A vacant seat is available right now," so I created it.]
Even purchasing agencies that charge a commission to snap up canceled tickets on behalf of others have emerged. However, Korail maintains that this is also illegal trading involving the resale of tickets at prices higher than the official price.
(Photo: Yonhap News / Video by Kang Si-woo, Video by Ahn Yeo-jin, Design by Yang Gi-tae)
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