"Prime Yeouido Fireworks Festival Spots Going for 400,000 Won"—Reselling Reserved Spots Draws Criticism

[Financial News] Ahead of the Seoul International Fireworks Festival, so-called "spot reservation businesses" are proliferating, with people reserving spots at Yeouido Hangang Park—open to everyone—and charging hundreds of thousands of won. Other tactics targeting the festival boom, such as selling parking passes, are also spreading.
On September 3, dozens of posts appeared on secondhand trading platforms such as Karrot and Bungaejangter, offering to reserve prime viewing spots for the Seoul International Fireworks Festival, which begins on the 5th.
Prices ranged from the 100,000-won range to the 300,000-won range. One seller tried to attract buyers by saying the fee would be 300,000 won for groups of one to four and 400,000 won for groups of five to six, with spots assigned on a first-come, first-served basis. This month, posts offering outright "prime spot reservation services" have also appeared.
On-site spot reservations are also taking place rapidly. The stepped area beneath Wonhyo Bridge, considered one of the prime spots in Hangang Park, was already filled with picnic mats from the morning of September 3.
Some mats had warning notices from the Future Hangang Headquarters stating, "No reserving spots in advance," but people continued to claim spaces. The Future Hangang Headquarters plans to collect unattended mats on the morning of September 4 and store them at an information center.
Competition to secure parking spaces is also intense. One-day parking passes for buildings near the event venue are being traded for 20,000 to 30,000 won on secondhand trading sites, while most parking lots near Yeouido are reportedly fully booked in advance.
However, there is no clear legal basis for penalizing such transactions. Yeouido Hangang Park is a public facility, and there is insufficient legal grounds to punish the act of reserving a spot as a commercial transaction in itself.
A Seoul Metropolitan Government official said, "We can detect ticket scalping, but it is practically difficult to catch people engaging in commercial transactions by reserving spots in advance."
The Seoul Metropolitan Government is responding by installing warning banners, providing verbal guidance, and asking secondhand trading platforms to delete relevant posts. Hanwha, the event organizer, is also reportedly monitoring secondhand trading sites and reporting the posts to the platforms.
There have also been calls to revise ordinances to prohibit advance spot reservations before large-scale events, but the proposal has not yet led to substantive discussions.

[email protected] Minseo Seong Reporter