DeepSeek is probably the most controversial AI product to hit the market. That’s a tough title to gain, as the reigning champ produced images of Asian founding fathers and told you to put glue on pizza. As such, more people are willing to block it for safety reasons. According to a new report, South Korea has now blocked DeepSeek for the sake of security.
DeepSeek burst onto the scene last month with a powerful reasoning model named R1. Seemingly coming out of nowhere, this chatbot brought with it some pretty major drama. For starters, it caused a pretty big crash in the AI stock market with NVIDIA’s stocks losing almost $600 billion. Other companies like Microsoft lost over $70 billion on the stock market. Also, we found out that all of the data that DeepSeek gathers sits on servers in mainland China. This is something that has many people worried.
There’s a mountain of controversies surrounding DeepSeek, and it seems like they’re piling up. Regardless, people keep hopping onto it.
DeepSeek is now blocked in South Korea
Around the world, countries and governmental bodies dropping DeepSeek due to security concerns. That’s justified, as the company has gone through some major data breaches in its short time in the limelight.
As such, DeepSeek is no longer available to download on phones in Korea. This means that you can’t download the app within the country. Along with that, the chatbot can not be installed on the devices of governmental or military employees.
While it seems like this decision was purely a result of the controversy, that might not be the case. South Korea has a data protection commission called the Personal Information Protection Commission (PIPC). As such, the country has its own set of rules involving data privacy. Well, it looks like DeepSeek didn’t take into account those regulations before launching in the country. This means that there’s a chance that it will return.
The South Korean government will investigate DeepSeek to see whether it will comply with the PIPC regulation. Doing so will take quite a bit of time, as noted in the press release. However, once DeepSeek shows that it complies with the regulations, then it will be able to return to the country. Until then, eager DeepSeek users will have to wait. We don’t know how long the investigation will take, but you should expect it to take a matter of weeks if not a few months.