South Korean officials on Saturday temporarily limited The Chinese AI Lab Deepseek application of download from application stores in the country while waiting for an assessment of how the Chinese company manages user data.
THE The Personal Information Protection Commission (PIPC) said The Chinese application would be available to be downloaded once it complies with Korean Privacy Laws and will make the necessary changes.
Restrictions will not affect the use of the existing application and the web service in the country. However, data protection authority said it “strongly advises” current users to avoid entering personal information in Deepseek until its final decision is taken.
After the publication of the Deepseek service in South Korea at the end of January, the PIPC said it had contacted the AI Chinese laboratory to find out how it collects and process personal data and, in its evaluation, found problems with The third party service of Deepseek and political confidentiality.
The PICC confirmed to Techcrunch that its survey revealed that Deepseek had transferred data from South Korean users to Bytedance, Tiktok’s parent company.
Deepseek did not immediately respond to requests for comments.
The agency said Deepseek had recently appointed a local representative in South Korea and recognized that he did not know the laws of confidentiality in South Korea when it was launched from its service. The Chinese company also said last Friday that it would collaborate closely with the Korean authorities.
Earlier this monthThe Ministry of Trade, South Korea industry and energy, police and a company managed by the State, Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power, have temporarily blocked access to the Chinese IA startup on Official devices citing security problems.
South Korea is not the only cautious country with Deepseek given its Chinese origins. Australia has forbidden The use of Deepseek on government systems outside of security concerns. The guarantor, Italian data protection authorityasked Deepseek to block her chatbot in the country, while Taiwan prohibited the ministries for the use of Deepseek IA.
Deepseek, based in Hangzhou, was founded by Liang Feng in 2023, and he released Deepseek R1A free open-source IA model that competes with the Openai Chatppt.
