Criticized for Opening to Just Few General Audience

The Busan International Film Festival kicked off on October 3. The approximately 1,500 seats opened to the public were sold out in less than a minute this year, as they have been in the past. Specifically, it took just 43 seconds this year. 

Under the circumstances, many people are suggesting that the opening ceremony of the show be allowed to average citizens. They say that the organizing committee and the host city of Busan keep too many invitation-only tickets. Seven out of every 10 seats were assigned only to invited guests this year. 

According to the committee, the Busan Cinema Center, the venue for the film festival, has 5,000 open-air seats. 1,000 of these are temporary seats for the festival and 1,500 out of the 5,000 are for the general audience. 1,300 of them are available on the Internet, and the other 200 are sold offline to those aged 50 or older who are unfamiliar with online reservations. 

The small number of seats has caused ticketing problems year after year. Not a few citizens scalp tickets on the Web, doubling or tripling the price to 40,000 to 60,000 won (US$37.36 to US$56.04) or higher. Although the same situation has been repeated for years, the hosting organization has made little effort to deal with it.