South Korea pauses downloads of DeepSeek AI over privacy concerns

DeepSeek, the massively popular Chinese AI assistant, has been temporarily unavailable from app stores in South Korea since February 15. A press release from the country’s data protection authority, the Personal Information Protection Commission (PIPC), stated that downloads will resume once the Chinese AI company complies with local data protection laws, while those with the app can still use it. DeepSeek is also blocked on South Korean government and military devices.

DeepSeek only established a local presence in South Korea on February 10. The company also acknowledged that it didn’t fully consider South Korea’s data protection laws when launching the service globally. Fortunately for South Korean users, the new AI powerhouse intends to cooperate with the PIPC.

The PIPC says that inspecting DeepSeek will take some time. On-site inspections of six AI services from Google, OpenAI, Microsoft and others took around five months. This inspection should take less time because it only involves DeepSeek.

In a statement to TechCrunch, the PIPC revealed that it discovered DeepSeek was transferring Korean users’ data to ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company. Local users were warned against entering personal information into the app.

Last month, the Italian Data Protection Authority or Garante, sent DeepSeek an information request asking what type of data the models were trained on and several other questions. Other countries like Australia and Taiwan have also banned the app on government devices due to security concerns.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun responded to South Korea’s DeepSeek ban, claiming Beijing would never ask any company or individual to store or collect data illicitly.