Korean soccer club apologizes for using sex dolls to fill empty seats
FC Seoul apologized for using sex dolls to fill seats while fans are banned from games because of the novel coronavirus pandemic. (Yonhap/EPA-EFE)
Playing in empty stadiums, teams have resorted to placing banners and cutouts of fans over empty seats, making a better backdrop for television and photos. FC Seoul took it a step further by placing 30 mannequins around the stadium Sunday for its 1-0 K League win over Gwangju FC. The club denied that they had an alternate, adult purpose and called them “premium mannequins.” They were, however, a product of Dalkom, a company that makes sex toys and other adult products.
“We would like to apologize to the fans,” the club said in a statement on social media. “We are very sorry about the supporting mannequins that were placed during the game on May 17. These mannequins may have been made to look and feel like real humans, but they are not for sexual use — as confirmed by the manufacturer from the beginning.”
The life-size dolls wore face masks and were posed in a number of positions, appearing to cheer the action on the pitch. Twenty-eight were female and two were male, according to the BBC, and some wore items that advertised adult websites.
“They were supposed to take all the logos down before the game started,” Dalkom Director Cho Young-june told the BBC, “but there were several hairbands and logos left to be caught by [the] public eye.”
The club said it had hoped to “do something lighthearted in these difficult times. We will think hard about what we need to do to ensure that something like this never happens again.”
Lee Ji-hoon, an FC Seoul official, told the BBC that the team hadn’t checked into Dalkom’s background and added that the dolls looked “very human.”
League rules forbid inappropriate or sexual advertisements, so FC Seoul could be fined. “It is not easy to say whether this breaks the rules, as it is not a clear violation,” an unidentified K League official told news site OSEN (via ESPN). “We are trying to get a clear interpretation.”
