DeepSeek, a hugely popular Chinese AI assistant, has been temporarily unavailable in app stores in South Korea since February 15. The press release from the Personal Information Protection Commission (PIPC), which is responsible for data protection, states that downloads will resume as soon as the Chinese AI company complies with local data protection laws, and those who have the app can still use it. DeepSeek is also blocked on South Korean government and military devices.
DeepSeek opened its local presence in South Korea only on February 10. The company also admitted that it did not fully consider South Korean data protection laws when launching the service globally. Fortunately for South Korean users, the new AI developer intends to cooperate with PIPC.
The PIPC says that it will take some time to verify DeepSeek. On-site inspections of six artificial intelligence services from Google, OpenAI, Microsoft, and others took about five months. This inspection should take less time, as it only applies to DeepSeek.
In a statement to TechCrunch, the PIPC said it had discovered that DeepSeek had been transferring Korean users’ data to ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company. Local users were warned against entering personal information into the app.
Last month, Italy’s 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, such as Australia and Taiwan, have also banned the app on government devices for security reasons.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun responded to the DeepSeek ban in South Korea by saying that Beijing would never ask any company or individual to store or collect data illegally.
