Korea Railroad Corporation (Korail) reported that it has identified a passenger presenting a forged train ticket created using generative artificial intelligence (AI) and has referred 35 suspected scalping transactions during the Chuseok holiday to law enforcement.
According to Korail, the passenger was caught during an onboard inspection on September 20. The individual has been handed over to the Railway Special Judicial Police and is facing charges of securities forgery, with a referral to the prosecution pending.
In addition, Korail has reported 35 suspected scalping transactions identified during the Chuseok holiday and has expelled eight railway members involved in reselling tickets. This marks an increase of nine cases compared to the 26 reported during this year's Lunar New Year. For the Lunar New Year, there were 19 reports of scalping and seven mystery shopper cases, while for Chuseok, there were 25 reports and 10 mystery shopper cases. The mystery shopper program, which involves employees posing as buyers to identify sellers, was introduced during this year's Lunar New Year.
The reporting system operates through the Korail website and the mobile app 'Korail+'. If a report is confirmed as a legitimate scalping transaction, the informant receives a discount coupon for KTX. Of the 10 sellers identified through the mystery shopper program, eight were expelled.
Two individuals who repeatedly engaged in scalping for commercial purposes were fined 6 million won each in July. The Railroad Business Act imposes fines of up to 10 million won for reselling tickets at inflated prices.
Korail has implemented a macro detection solution since July of last year, successfully blocking an average of 16,000 macro attacks per day. During this year's Lunar New Year reservation period, it preemptively blocked 42,695 abnormal access attempts.
The National Investigation Agency of the National Police Agency conducted a special crackdown from March 3 for six months, uncovering 126 cases of scalping using macros and arresting 157 individuals. Among those arrested, two were detained, and 2 billion won in criminal proceeds was preserved before prosecution. Eight of the cases involved ticket-related offenses, with 11 individuals implicated, including a scalper who resold over 4,000 KTX and SRT tickets using macros over a period of 1 year and 7 months.
* This article has been translated by AI.
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