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"Chasing Profiteering Will Lead to Ruin" ••• 'K-Price Gouging' in Lodging and Taxis to Face Business Suspension

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  Original article:  EDaily ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Government announces anti-price gouging measures at National Tourism Strategy meeting Triggered by soaring accommodation prices linked to BTS... President Lee Jae-myung calls it an "outdated and regressive practice" No corrective orders or warnings... First violation: 5-day suspension for lodging, 30 days for taxis Lodging sector to introduce a "voluntary advance rate-reporting system" with price caps ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Accommodation providers that unilaterally cancel existing reservations and resell rooms are higher prices, as well as taxis that charge unreasonably high fares, will face immediate business suspensions if caught.  On the afternoon of the 25th, President Lee Jae-myung presided over an expanded National Tourism Strategy Meeting and announced comprehensive measures to eradicate price gouging. Following the surge in accommodation prices linked to the BTS concert in Busan and...

Government Cracks Down on "BTS Price Gouging"... Lodging Businesses to be Shut Down Immediately If Overcharging Is Detected

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━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Accomodation prices surge 7.5 times ahead of BTS's Busan concert ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ The government is mobilizing strong punitive measures to curb the sharp rise in accommodation prices surrounding BTS's concert in Busan.  Going forward, any business found engaging in price gouging will be subject to immediate suspension, even for a first offense. A mandatory advance price reporting system will also be introduced for lodging facilities. On the 25th, the Ministry of Economy and Finance announced comprehensive countermeasures against excessive pricing at the National Tourism Strategy Meeting.  The government defined price gouging to include failing to display prices, excessively raising dates during peak seasons, and unilaterally canceling existing reservations in order to resell rooms at higher prices.  ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Fair trade commission finds rates up to 7.5 times higher than usual These measures f...

BTS’s V, a Legendary Face… Japanese Plastic Surgeon: “World’s Most Handsome No. 1, Naturally”

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  Original article:  MHN Sports ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ V (Kim Taehyung) of BTS has drawn attention after receiving lavish praise from a Japanese plastic surgery specialist, who described his face as being of “national treasure” caliber. A well-known Japanese plastic surgeon analyzed V’s face on social media and could not hide his admiration, calling his looks “legendary” and “worthy of national treasure status.” He explained, “V has a face where cuteness and handsomeness are perfectly harmonized, and he also exudes sexiness. People with this kind of charm often have an androgynous vibe with soft, feminine contours. Taehyung’s face shape is gently rounded, and even the tip of his nose is slightly rounded. But above all, what truly captures attention is his eyes.” He continued, “With just one look, he can instantly captivate women. It’s only natural that he ranks No. 1 as the world’s most handsome man. Reaching that level requires immense popularity and charisma...

BTS's Free Gwanghwamun Concert Draws Over 100,000 in Queue Immediately After Ticket Sales Open

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  Original article:  Newsis ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ More than 100,000 people rushed to reserve tickets for the free concert at Gwanghwamun Square, held to celebrate the comeback of global superstar group BTS and their fifth full-length album, ARIRANG.  According to industry sources on the 23rd, as soon as ticket sales opened at 8:00 p.m. in NOL Ticket, a massive surge of users flooded site, resulting in a waiting queue exceeding 100,000 people.  Even after successfully accessing the site, many users experienced "white screen" errors or were reset during the payment process with messages stating that the seats had already been purchased. As of 8:35 p.m., just 35 minutes after sales began, 99% of all tickets had been sold out.  Police issued a strong warning against proxy purchasing and high-priced resale scams related to the ticketing process.  During a briefing that morning, the Seoul Metropolitan Police Chief stated, "So far, we have requested ...

260,000 "ARMY" Fans to Gather, Gwanghwamun Abuzz

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  Original article:  Naver ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Local Businesses Look Forward to BTS's March Concert ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ "Let's split accomodation costs near Gwanghwamun, and find a partner to attend the concert and explore Korean food together!" This post appeared on the ARMY Seoul Stay  website, which was created ahead of BTS's comeback concert to be held on 21 of next month at Gwanghwamun Square in Seoul. The site was voluntarily set up by fans from around the world to share travel information ahead of their trips to Korea.  On the message boards, posts are appearing in languages from all over the world, including English, Chinese, Japanese, Indonesian, Malay, and Arabic. One Indonesian fan shared "tips for traveling cheaply in Korea," writing, "You can buy rice and side dishes at convenience stores for 2,000-4,000 won, eat gimbap at Gimbap Cheonguk, and enjoy street foods at Gwangjang Market." A fan who said t...

South Korean President's Response to Mexico's Request for More Concert Dates Sparks Controversy

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  As part of their world tour schedule, BTS announced earlier this year that they would perform at Estadio GNP Seguros Stadium in Mexico City on May 7, 9, and 10. Despite the three scheduled shows, all tickets sold out within just 37 minutes of going on sale. Ticketmaster reported that up to 1.1 million users simultaneously entered the virtual waiting room to purchase tickets. A Ticketmaster representative described the situation as one of the most intense and highly competitive ticket sales in the recent history of Mexico's live music industry. However, the atmosphere within the Mexican fan community was far from celebratory. Over the following week, fans repeatedly filed complaints regarding the lack of transparency and fairness in the ticketing process. These concerns included the absence of a published seating map, unclear fee structure, and suspicions of pre-arranged ticket resales. In response to the backlash, the Federal Consumer Protection Agency (Profeco) announced that it...

ARMYs Defend V (Kim Taehyung) Against Allegations of Supporting Min Heejin in ILLIT Plagiarism Controversy

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  On The 12th, the 31st Civil Agreement Division of the Seoul Central District Court ruled in favor of Min Heejin in HYBE's lawsuit seeking confirmation of the termination of the shareholders' agreement, as well as the lawsuit filed by Min against HYBE demanding payment related to the exercise of her put option. The court dismissed HYBE's claims and ruled that the company must pay Mind approximately 25.5 billion won (approx. $17.630.040). Notably, the court also determined that Min's statements claiming that ILLIT copied NewJeans constituted a legitimate expression of opinion. The court stated that her remarks did not refer to specific factual elements but instead an overall impression of similarity, which qualifies as a subjective evaluation rather than a statement of fact. However, what drew even more public attention was that among the evidence submitted by Min's side was a KakaoTalk message exchange between V and Min. The idol was reported to have reacted to dis...