South Korea has temporarily banned the Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) service DeepSeek over concerns about its data collection practices. The Personal Information Protection Commission (PIPC), the country’s national data watchdog, announced that DeepSeek’s web service was suspended and its applications removed from local app stores as of February 15. The decision, according to the PIPC, will remain in place until the company takes necessary steps to ensure compliance with South Korea’s data protection laws.

The regulatory action reflects growing concerns in South Korea over data security, especially when it involves foreign tech companies handling domestic user information. The PIPC has urged users who had previously downloaded the app to proceed with caution while the investigation into DeepSeek’s data policies is ongoing. Although DeepSeek’s applications remain accessible to those who installed them before the ban, the government’s firm stance indicates that serious compliance issues are at play.

DeepSeek, a Hangzhou-based AI startup, recently gained global attention by launching DeepSeek-R1, an open-source reasoning AI model. Unlike Western competitors like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which restricts access through a subscription-based model, DeepSeek offers its services freely. This open-access approach has significantly contributed to its rapid rise in popularity, propelling it to the top of Apple’s App Store and Google Play rankings. The web-based version of DeepSeek has also experienced sporadic outages due to overwhelming demand.

DeepSeek’s AI model is distinguished by its open-source framework, which allows users to download and run the model locally on their servers. This feature has reinforced the open-source........

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