South Korea blocks downloads of DeepSeek from local app stores
South Korean officials on Saturday temporarily limited The Chinese AI Lab Deepseek app is downloaded from app stores in the country awaiting an assessment of how the Chinese company handles user data.
The Personal Information Protection Committee (PIPC) said The Chinese app would be available to be downloaded as soon as it meets the Korean privacy laws and makes the necessary changes.
The limitations do not affect the use of the existing app and web service in the country. The data protection authority, however, said that it “strongly advises” the current users to prevent them from entering personal information in Deepseek until the final decision has been made.
After the release of the Deepseek Service in South Korea at the end of January, the PIPC said that contact with the Chinese AI-LAB to inquire how the personal data collects and processes, and in his evaluation problems with the Deepseek’s third service and Privacy found policy.
The PICC confirmed to WAN that her research discovered that Deepseek had transferred data from South Korean users to Bytedance, the parent company of Tiktok.
Deepseek did not immediately respond to requests for comments.
The agency said Deepseek recently appointed a local representative in South Korea and acknowledged that it was not familiar with the privacy laws of South Korea when it launched its service. The Chinese company also said last Friday that it would work closely with the Korean authorities.
Earlier this monthSouth Korea’s Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy, Police and a company run by the State, Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power, temporarily blocked access to the Chinese AI startup on official devices that have concern about safety.
South Korea is not the only country that is careful with Deepseek, given its Chinese origin. Australia has forbidden The use of Deepseek on government devices for safety problems. The guarantee, The Italian Data Protection AuthorityDeepseek has instructed to block its chatbot in the country, while Taiwan has forbidden government services to use Deepseek AI.
Hangzhou City established Deepseek was founded by Liang Feng in 2023, and it was released Deepseek R1A free, open-source reasoning AI model that competes with OpenAi’s Chatgpt.
