K-League fines FC Seoul over 'sex doll fans' fiasco

Table of Contents

Photo: @WhoAteTheSquid

South Korea side FC Seoul have been issued with a ₩100 million (€74,000) fine for using sex dolls to fill the space in their empty stadium during a match last weekend.

The Korean top flight kicked off behind closed doors on May 8, after being postponed for more than two months due to the coronavirus pandemic.

With fans banned from matches because of the pandemic, Seoul played at home against Gwangju last Sunday with mannequins in the stands to provide some semblance of atmosphere.

Unfortunately, the club failed to realise that the silicone spectators watching on were not of the ordinary variety, but were indeed toys made for adults only.

Photos: @WhoAteTheSquid

Explaining the error, the club said the faux pas was down to a mix-up with the manufacturer.

We would like to apologise to our fans. We're genuinely sorry to our fans about the installation of the mannequins at our game on May 17.

We confirmed from the start that the mannequins we installed in the stands had no relation to the adult toys, even though they do indeed resemble real humans.

The mannequins are manufactured by a company named Dalkom, and they informed us that the mannequins are designed for displaying apparel and fashion products. We confirmed with them on numerous occasions to make sure that the mannequins are not adult toys.

However, Dalkom has been distributing some of the mannequin products to another business named Soros, and in the process of return and exchange of the products between them, the installation at our stadium included some products with messages in text that are related to the adult toys.

That was a problem on our employees who couldn't check every detail of everything that was installed. That is an inexcusable mistake on our part.

Our intention from the start was to provide even a small entertainment after it was decided that the games would be hosted behind closed doors due to coronavirus.

Regardless of that, we would like to apologise once again to everyone who loves and supports FC Seoul. We will be holding further discussions on how we can review potential problems in similar matters. We will put forth our due diligence to prevent such issues in the future.

Whilst football authorities accepted that Seoul had not purposely ordered sex dolls, the club have been fined for "damaging the prestige and integrity of the league".

Announcing the sanction in a statement, the K-League said:

The disciplinary committee decided to take heavy disciplinary action considering the graveness of the incident, caused by the "real doll", that has greatly insulted and hurt female and family fans and to prevent similar incidents going forward.

For any enquiries, please contact us here.