You can no longer download DeepSeek in South Korea, for now

DeepSeek, a Chinese AI startup, has temporarily paused downloads of its chatbot apps in South Korea due to privacy concerns.

China’s Personal Information Protection Commission announced on February 17, 2025, that DeepSeek’s apps had been removed from the local versions of Apple’s App Store and Google Play. DeepSeek has agreed to work with the commission to strengthen privacy protections before the apps can be relaunched.

This action comes after a review of the company’s data handling practices, which found that DeepSeek lacked transparency regarding third-party data transfers and may have collected excessive personal information.

Nam Seok, director of the investigation division at the commission, advised South Korean users to either delete the app or avoid entering personal information until the issues are resolved.

Despite these concerns, DeepSeek remains popular in South Korea, where it was recently used by about 1.2 million people.

The suspension is part of a global wave of pushback against DeepSeek. Countries such as Italy, Taiwan, and Australia have either banned or restricted the app over concerns about its potential to compromise national security and user privacy.

U.S. lawmakers have also introduced a bill to ban DeepSeek on federal devices. Though, some US-based companies have embraced DeepSeek’s models in their services.

Microsoft, for instance, has incorporated DeepSeek’s R1 model into its Azure AI Foundry and GitHub platform and will soon let developers try the model on Copilot+ PCs. Perplexity AI, a U.S.-based AI search platform, also added DeepSeek’s R1 model to its offerings.