South Korea’s Personal Information Protection Commission says they have temporarily suspended the services of Deepseek from operating in their country, and it’ll be reinstated once “adjustments are made to comply with domestic personal information protection laws.”
Deepseek, a Chinese Artificial Intelligence (AI) startup, owned and funded by the Chinese hedge fund High Flyer, has been taken down by the South Korean Government from their App Store. Right from its R1-model launch in January 2025, it has caused quite some stir in the AI industry, as it has been greatly considered a competition to ChatGPT, OpenAI’s most advanced technology.
This is not far-fetched as the release of Deepseek’s R1 ‘reasoning’ model triggered a US stock-market sell-off – Nvidia, a dominant chip designer for the ever-evolving AI industry, had its market value fall by $600bn.
Despite its record-breaking launch and praise for being ‘cheap and easily trainable,’ the AI-powered chatbot also presents significant cybersecurity risks, leading South Korea to remove it from their App Store.
South Korea, under the administration of President Moon Jae-In which began in 2017, started to alienate the state of S Korea from global political and economic engagements, and instead, started to focus on renewed sovereignty and standard national security. This posture, continued under the current government, contributes to the current approach to AI regulation. But it may also go beyond alienating; South Korea might have legitimate concerns as to why they are going this route – they believe it poses a great risk of crippling their industries.
The representative who spoke for the country’s Personal Information Protection Commission made it clear that there were “shortcomings in the service’s third-party operator and communication features, as well as in the privacy policy.” He then points out that the Chinese company had overlooked some part of South Korea’s domestic privacy laws. This is clearly borne out of the lack of clarity in Deepseek’s privacy policy.
On another note, it might seem that other countries are also embracing data protection and asking important questions. For instance, Italy has decided to take Deepseek down from some of their App stores due to the risk of data misuse. Through the launch of an investigation, Italy’s Data Protection Agency has asked Deepseek to address and clarify their privacy policy — how they collect personal data, and whether it is processed in China or not.
Taiwan and Australia have also followed suit by banning the usage of the AI-powered chatbot on all government devices. The representatives of each government announced that the ban will remain until Deepseek does its part by clarifying its privacy policies.
Lawmakers in the US are also doing the same with the proposing of a bill to ban Deepseek from federal devices due to the surveillance risks it bears. The US Navy has succeeded with banning the usage of Deepseek on both government-owned and personal devices of its staff.
In France, Data Protection Authorities are asking the Chinese-based AI company on how it stores and protects French citizens’ personal information — if it is stored in China, just like Deepseek’s privacy policy suggests.
South Korea removing Deepseek from their App store is generally out of larger privacy concerns, and it is done in a bid to further protect their national sovereignty and security. In fact, it seems there’s a solid level of cooperation between the South Korean Government and Deepseek, as the whole process started with a proposal written to and approved by the Artificial Intelligence Company.
