[Anchor]

Ahead of the Chuseok holiday, a "war to catch canceled tickets" is underway among homecoming travelers who have not yet secured train tickets. Amid a rise in scam cases, websites that send notifications the moment a canceled ticket becomes available have also appeared.

Reporter Jeong Jiyeon investigated.

[Reporter]

People are gathered in front of the ticket counter at Seoul Station.

[Station Staff : They are all sold out. There are already a lot of people on the reservation waiting list, so right now...]

[Kim Sung-shik and Kim Da-yeon / Daegu Homecoming Travelers : I managed to get a ticket, but since my wife has to come down separately the day before Chuseok, I came to see if there were any standing-room-only tickets left, but as expected, there are none.]

Let us take a look at the ticket vending machine.

This is a train heading from Seoul to Pohang.

Starting from the day before Chuseok, when the holiday begins, all seats, including standing-room-only tickets, are sold out.

This Chuseok holiday train reservation rate stood at 84%, which is 21.3 percentage points higher than last Chuseok, when travel was dispersed over a 7-day holiday.

[Song Ji-min / Changwon, Gyeongsangnam-do Homecoming Traveler : It was too difficult this time. Everything is completely sold out. Since it happened that everyone is coming back up on Sunday, it seemed even harder to get one. It is a situation where you have to wage a war...]

Posts seeking KTX tickets are continuously being uploaded on second-hand trading platforms, and there was even a family of four who sent 400,000 won and failed to receive tickets after falling victim to scammers targeting this desperation.

[Busan Homecoming Traveler : I offered a slightly higher price because I really wanted to get them. When the train tickets kept not arriving, I tried calling, but the phone was unreachable, as it seemed to be a burner phone.]

An IT company has developed and started offering a free service that notifies users when a canceled ticket becomes available once they input their desired train schedule.

[Lee Ho-se / Empty Seat Alert Service Developer : There are times when a friend has to come to Seoul from Daejeon on a business trip, and every time, there are no KTX tickets... I thought it would be good to have an alarm app that at least tells you, "An empty seat is available right now," so I made it.]

Even purchasing agency companies that charge a commission to grab tickets canceled by others have emerged, but Korail maintains the stance that this is also an illegal transaction of reselling tickets at prices higher than the regular price.

(Video by Kang Si-woo, Video Editing by An Yeo-jin, Design by Yang Gi-tae)