IKEA has said it would take “more careful” security measures in its shops in China after an explicit video of a woman masturbating in one of its stores went viral online.
The pornographic clip shows a woman pleasuring herself half-naked on various sofas and beds in the store’s showroom, while oblivious shoppers walk by in the background.
While uncensored versions of the video have been scrubbed from Chinese social media, the Swedish company’s response to the clip gained 9 million views.
“We resolutely oppose and condemn this kind of behavior, and immediately reported it to the police in the city of the suspected store,” IKEA said in a statement, without revealing the name of the branch.
The homeware group on Saturday said that it would take “even more careful security and public cleanliness measures” and encouraged all customers to “browse stores in an orderly and civilized way.”
The identity of the woman and the person who filmed it have not been revealed.
Some Chinese social media users have speculated it was a store in Guangdong Province, as Cantonese can be heard in the background store announcements.
Baffled users online also pointed out that nobody is wearing face masks in the video, suggesting it was filmed before the COVID-19 outbreak that brought China to a standstill from late January.
“This woman is so brave, I don’t understand, [she’s] just doing it in broad daylight,” read one Weibo post that gained more than 8,000 likes.
“There are so many people around, I just don’t understand,” another Weibo user wrote.
It is not the first explicit video to cause a stir on China’s tightly controlled social media platforms: A Beijing branch of the Japanese clothing chain Uniqlo became infamous in 2015, after a clip of a couple having sex in one of its changing rooms went viral.
Police arrested five people, including the young couple in the video, over the matter.
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