Busan civil servants drafted to staff BTS concert for free, sparking backlash

A controversy over the mass mobilization of civil servants has erupted ahead of the "BTS World Tour Arirang IN Busan" concerts, scheduled for Friday and Saturday at Busan Asiad Main Stadium.

According to the workplace community app Blind, a post titled "Nearly a thousand civil servants are being drafted for the BTS concert — for free" appeared on June 5.

The post's author, a civil servant identified only as A, argued that the concert was neither a free event nor one organized by the city of Busan. "This is a commercial concert that HYBE is putting on to make money," A wrote. "Instead of hiring their own staff, they're using 910 workers at the main venue and drafting 915 Busan city civil servants — not police or fire department personnel, but ordinary city hall workers. Is this right?"

A went on to say that Busan City Hall had effectively become "HYBE's Busan branch office — and a free one at that, pulling workers during business hours on Thursday, Friday and Saturday."

In a follow-up comment, A added that "the staffing costs HYBE should be paying are set to be covered by local government funds, with the city planning to pay for civil servant safety personnel out of its own budget."

Other civil servants who saw the post reacted with frustration. "When civil servants are drafted like this, they get paid 10,000 won an hour — they should be handling their own safety arrangements and putting on the concert with their own money," one commenter wrote. Others called it "a clear breach of fiduciary duty," noted that "there was plenty of criticism when it happened in Seoul and apparently Busan is no different," and asked, "Has the beneficiary-pays principle just disappeared?"

One Busan city official, speaking anonymously to KBS, said the discontent ran deep inside the organization. "This isn't an event the city is running — it's a commercial concert where a private company takes 100 percent of the profit. There's a lot of frustration internally because nobody can understand why civil servants should be mobilized en masse to handle safety management for something like this," the official said. "I really don't understand why money that HYBE should be paying is coming out of our tax funds."

"BTS World Tour Arirang IN Busan" runs Friday and Saturday at Busan Asiad Main Stadium. Ticket prices are steep: standard S-class seats are priced at 198,000 won (about $128), R-class seats at 220,000 won and a sound-check package at 264,000 won.

An estimated 100,000 visitors from South Korea and abroad are expected to travel to Busan during the concert period.

Busan city officials plan to use the concerts as an opportunity to promote the city to fans worldwide and boost local tourism. The city has set up a BTS welcome center booth for fans — known as "ARMY" — at Busan Station, and has installed commemorative video displays and lighting at major attractions including Haeundae and Gwangalli to build a festival atmosphere. The city has also announced expanded public transit measures, including extended subway and bus service and reduced headways on concert days. Gimhae Airport will expand international arrivals operations from the early morning hours through 9 a.m. during peak congestion periods, and foreign tourists will receive a "welcome kit" that includes discount vouchers for the Visit Busan Pass tourism transit product.

The controversy echoes criticism that followed a free BTS comeback concert at Gwanghwamun Square in Seoul on March 21, when attendance fell well short of the government's projection of 260,000 — reaching less than half that figure — while more than 10,000 civil servants had already been deployed as safety personnel.

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