South Korea Blocks DeepSeek over Privacy Concerns, Urges Policy Change

The Chinese AI app DeepSeek will not be accessible for download in South Korea until its user data handling practices are reviewed. According to Seoul officials.

Investors and industry insiders were astounded by DeepSeek's R1 chatbot's capacity to perform the same tasks as its Western rivals at a significantly lower cost. DeepSeek claims that its "secure servers located in the People's Republic of China" are where it stores customer data, however several nations have expressed concerns about this.

Seoul's Personal Information Protection Commission announced on Monday that DeepSeek would no longer be accessible for download until its methods for gathering personal data were examined.

"To prevent further concerns from spreading, the commission recommended that DeepSeek temporarily suspend its service while making the necessary improvements," the data protection agency said.

At 6 p.m. (0900 GMT) on Saturday, the app was taken down from local app stores and is still not accessible. For users who have already downloaded the app, the AI chatbot remains operational. People were "strongly advised" to "use the service with caution until the final results are announced" by Seoul's data protection agency.

"It has on the other hand disclosed a privacy policy for the EU and certain other countries, stating that it complies with the domestic laws of those nations," Youm, a data security professor at Soonchunhyang University, said.