South Korea has banned new downloads of DeepSeek, the Chinese AI chatbot, in response to concerns raised by the country’s personal data protection watchdog. The Personal Information Protection Commission (PIPC) has stated that DeepSeek will only be available again to South Korean users once “improvements and remedies” are implemented to ensure compliance with the nation’s personal data protection laws.
DeepSeek’s rapid rise in popularity, with over a million weekly users in South Korea, triggered increased scrutiny and similar restrictive actions from countries worldwide due to privacy and national security considerations. The PIPC confirmed the app’s removal from Apple’s App Store and Google Play.
This action followed earlier measures from South Korean government agencies, which prohibited their employees from downloading the chatbot on their work devices.
Acting president Choi Sang-mok described DeepSeek as a “shock” with potential impacts extending beyond the AI sector. Despite the ban on new downloads, existing users can continue using the app or access it through DeepSeek’s website.
Other regions and countries have also taken actions against DeepSeek. Taiwan and Australia have banned it from all government devices, while Italy’s regulator, which previously banned ChatGPT in 2023, has taken similar steps with DeepSeek, requesting that the company address privacy policy concerns before its return to app stores. In the United States, lawmakers have proposed legislation to ban DeepSeek from federal devices, citing surveillance concerns, and several states, including Texas, Virginia, and New York, have already implemented similar rules for their employees.
DeepSeek’s “large language model” (LLM) has demonstrated reasoning capabilities comparable to those of US models like OpenAI’s o1, but reportedly at a significantly lower cost for training and operation. This has led to questions regarding the massive investments in AI infrastructure in the US and elsewhere.
