South Korean officials on Saturday temporarily restricted Chinese AI Lab DeepSeek’s app from being downloaded from app stores in the country pending an assessment of how the Chinese company handles user data.
The Personal Information Protection Commission (PIPC) said the Chinese app would be available to be downloaded once it complies with Korean privacy laws and makes the necessary changes.
The restrictions will not affect usage of the existing app and web service in the country. However, the data protection authority said it “strongly advises” current users to avoid entering personal information into DeepSeek until its final decision is made.
Following the release of the DeepSeek service in South Korea in late January, the PIPC said it reached out to the Chinese AI lab to inquire how it collects and processes personal data, and in its evaluation, found issues with DeepSeek’s third-party service and privacy policies.
The PICC confirmed to TechCrunch that its investigation found DeepSeek had transferred data of South Korean users to ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok.
DeepSeek did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The agency said DeepSeek recently appointed a local representative in South Korea and acknowledged that it was not familiar with South Korea’s privacy laws when it launched its service. The Chinese company also said last Friday that it would collaborate closely with Korean authorities.
Earlier this month, South Korea’s Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy, police, and a state-run company, Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power, temporarily blocked access to the Chinese AI startup on official devices citing security concerns.
South Korea is not the only country being cautious with DeepSeek given its Chinese origins. Australia has prohibited the use of DeepSeek on government devices out of security concerns. The Garante, Italy’s data protection authority, has instructed DeepSeek to block its chatbot in the country, while Taiwan has banned government departments from using DeepSeek AI.
Hangzhou city-based DeepSeek was founded by Liang Feng in 2023, and it released DeepSeek R1, a free, open-source reasoning AI model that competes with OpenAI’s ChatGPT.