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.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
RSS