The Personal Information Protection Commission (PIPC) of South Korea confirmed that the China-based artificial intelligence model DeepSeek leaked data of South Korean users to ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok. Following this revelation, the download of DeepSeek has been temporarily banned in the country, and an official investigation has been launched.

According to Yonhap, PIPC announced that DeepSeek sent information belonging to South Korean users to “third parties.” The commission stated, “We have confirmed that DeepSeek communicated with ByteDance,” adding that they have not yet determined the extent of data transferred.

Yesterday, PIPC suspended the download of DeepSeek nationwide “temporarily” due to concerns regarding its data collection methods, indicating that the ban will be lifted after appropriate adjustments are made in compliance with South Korea’s personal data protection laws. Moreover, South Korea’s Ministries of Foreign Affairs, Trade, and Environment have also banned the use of DeepSeek on internal devices due to security concerns.

In order to obtain detailed information about the company’s personal data collection policy, PIPC has sent an official request for investigation to DeepSeek’s center in China. DeepSeek, which was supported by High-Flyer Capital Management fund, released its open-source new model DeepSeek-R1 on January 20, developed with lower costs and fewer chips compared to other AI companies. Rapidly gaining popularity worldwide, DeepSeek surpassed the U.S.-based ChatGPT and became the most downloaded artificial intelligence application in app stores.