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| Sex dolls fill an empty football stadium in western Seoul during Seoul's game with Gwangju, Sunday. Yonhap |
By Kim Se-jeong
Seoul's K League football team apologized Monday over filling its stadium in western Seoul with sex dolls during its Sunday game with Gwangju FC but placed the blame on its supplier.
"We tried to make sure the mannequins weren't sex dolls multiple times," FC Seoul said in an apology posted on Instagram, adding that it happened because of a mix-up by the suppliers. "We take the blame on this point. We should have paid attention to details (when communicating with the supplier)."
Slowly reeling from the COVID-19 pandemic, Korea's professional football league had its first game of the year on Sunday with no live fans present.
"When we talked about this idea (filling the stands with dolls), it was only to add entertainment to the game which was to happen without any spectators," according to FC Seoul.
On Instagram, where FC Seoul posted pictures from the game, the sex doll suspicion spread fast. Not long after, the RT, a Television outlet based in Russia, picked up the story.
With the headline "Plastic fans: South Korean football club populates empty stands with inanimate sex dolls," RT wrote: "However, FC Seoul came up with an unorthodox solution to this problem (of having no one in the stand) ahead of Sunday's fixture with Gwangju FC, as they filled their stadium with eerily lifelike mannequins ― which many have suggested on social media are in fact life-sized sex dolls ― some of whom were reportedly holding placards promoting a local adult shop."
There had been no confirmation that they were sex dolls at that point.
The Sun, a tabloid published in the United Kingdom, picked the story up, too, saying "But eagle-eyed social media users suggested the dolls in question had a very different purpose to modeling clothes. It was claimed that the figures were actually life-sized sex dolls ― though how they knew this for certain is less clear."
