South Korea has officially announced a temporary suspension of the widely popular DeepSeek AI service in the country until authorities complete their review of the Chinese start-up’s data collection practices and implement “improvements and remedies.”
On Monday the Personal Information Protection Commission said that the DeepSeek application had been removed from the local app store and access to its web service was suspended at 6 pm on Saturday.
The ban remains in place until the company makes changes to ensure “compliance” with local laws, reports said.
Meanwhile, reacting sharply to the development, Beijing urged Chinese firms to operate "overseas operations based on strict abidance by local laws and regulations,” said the foreign ministry spokesperson.
Guo Jiakun also cautioned the relevant countries to “avoid weaponising the laws to suppress or politicise free trade and technology issues.”
Also read: South Korea halts downloads of DeepSeek over privacy concerns
Since its launch, the DeepSeek AI R1 has challenged OpenAI’s dominance, forcing a global market slump.
Allegedly, NVidia, the top-tier tech company globally, lost approximately “600 billion dollars as a result of a global market crash following the launch of Chinese DeepSeek AI.”
Experts have argued that these restrictions are part of US-imposed trade sanctions, as American tech giants in the US fear rival companies providing cheaper access to the same technology, particularly coming from China.
Apart from South Korea, Italy and Australia have also launched an investigation into DeepSeek's R1 model and blocked it from processing users' data.
Additionally, United States lawmakers have also proposed a bill to ban DeepSeek from being used on government devices over concerns about user data security.
In response to the bans, the Chinese government has insisted it "has never and will never require enterprises or individuals to illegally collect or store data."
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