News Summary

South Korea has temporarily paused the downloads of DeepSeek, a Chinese artificial intelligence startup’s chatbot apps, due to privacy concerns. The suspension was announced by South Korea’s Personal Information Protection Commission (PIPC), which revealed that DeepSeek’s applications were removed from the local versions of Apple’s App Store and Google Play. The halt was implemented after it was discovered that user data was being transferred to ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company, without adequate consideration of South Korea’s data protection laws. DeepSeek, which only recently established a local presence in South Korea, is working with the PIPC to address these issues and intends to strengthen privacy protections before relaunching its apps. This move follows similar bans on government devices in other countries due to security concerns.