Since February 15,
DeepSeek – the hugely popular Chinese AI assistant – has been temporarily unavailable in South Korea’s app stores. A In a press release issued by the Personal Information Protection Commission, the country’s data-protection authority, it was stated that the downloads would resume once the Chinese AI firm complied with local data-protection laws. Those who have the app can continue to use it. DeepSeek is also blocked on South Korean government devices and military equipment.
DeepSeek established a local presence only in South Korea on 10 February. The company acknowledged that they did not fully consider South Korea’s laws on data protection when launching their service globally. Fortunately, the new AI powerhouse plans to work with the PIPC.
According to the PIPC, inspecting DeepSeek may take some time. Five months was the average time it took to inspect six AI services, including those from Google, OpenAI and Microsoft. This inspection should be quicker because it is only DeepSeek.
The PIPC revealed in a statementto TechCrunchthat DeepSeek transferred Korean users’ data by TikTok parent company ByteDance. Local users were warned not to enter personal information in the app.
Last year, the Italian Data Protection Authority, or Garante, sent DeepSeek a request for information asking what types of data were used to train the models and other questions. Australia as well as Taiwan also banned the app from government devices because of security concerns. Guo Jiakun, spokesperson for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, responded South Korea’s DeepSeek Ban. He claimed Beijing would never ask a company or individual to collect or store data illegally.
