A South Korean football club has been forced to issue an official apology after inflating its attendance numbers with sex dolls. While fans watched the match from home in order to comply with lockdown measures, FC Seoul fans noticed something strange in the stands during the match on May 17. Mask-wearing, socially distanced “premium mannequins.”
2016 K League winners FC Seoul inadvertently used sex dolls rather than fashion mannequins to help fill empty stands this weekend. The club has apologised. Both the club and the supplier are pointing fingers at others. (It's not just COVID-19 you need to avoid catching!) #kleague pic.twitter.com/59rSU8XxYL
— Devon Rowcliffe (@WhoAteTheSquid) May 17, 2020
- Just FYI, X-rated stuff is banned in South Korea. Which is weird because many viewers noticed that some of the mannequins in the audience were holding up signs promoting X-rated websites. This prompted load of complaints to FC Seoul, understandably so.
- Apparently it was just one big misunderstanding. According to Dalcom, the mannequins were holding the signs because a sex toy company wanted to take photos before the match and then forgot to remove the signs. “They were supposed to take all the logos down before the game started,” Dalcom director Cho Young-june told the BBC. “But there were several hairbands and logos left to be caught by public eye.”
- The football club claims they didn’t know the dolls’ true purpose. FC Seoul official Lee Ji-hoon insists that he thought the dolls looked “very human” but admitted that he should have done more digging about Dalcom, who provided them.
- At least their apology was thorough. Writing in an Instagram post, FC Seoul said in a statement, “We would like to apologize to the fans. We are deeply sorry. We would like to clarify that while these mannequins have been made to look and feel like real humans, they are not for sexual use – as confirmed by the manufacturer. We had them supplied by a company named Dalcom, which claimed they are clothing mannequins. We double, triple checked that they are not for sexual use. Our intention was 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.”
- This is pretty hilarious, all said. It’s not like the dolls were indecently dressed or doing anything naughty. While it’s not great that they were promoting X-rated stuff, this is a pretty innocent error, all said.
