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DeepSeek usage tumbles in Korea on gov't security warnings

Published: 09 Feb. 2025, 16:33

CHO YONG-JUN
[email protected]

DeepSeek's AI assistant app is displayed in a picture taken on Jan. 29. [REUTERS/YONHAP]

DeepSeek app usage in Korea more than halved last week as government departments and companies began banning the Chinese AI startup's chatbot service over security concerns.

The number of DeepSeek’s mobile app daily users in Korea, which peaked on Jan. 28 at 191,556, plunged to 96,751 users on Jan. 30, according to IGAWorks’ market tracker Mobile Index on Sunday.

It fell further to 74,688 as of Tuesday, when the Ministry of Interior and Safety instructed government ministries and local governments to be “cautious” of using generative AI services, including ChatGPT and DeepSeek, and to not put sensitive or personal data in the chatbot.

App downloads for DeepSeek also drastically decreased to around 20,000 per day from Feb. 2 to Feb. 4, after peaking on Jan. 28 with 171,257 downloads.

The Chinese chatbot app currently sits at No. 16 on the Apple AppStore’s Korean free app rankings as of Sunday, after topping the chart for seven consecutive days since Jan. 28, with OpenAI’s ChatGPT app regaining the throne.

Despite DeepSeek and its most recent reasoning model, R1, being provided as open source, the privacy policy and security concerns of the chatbot, when used through DeepSeek’s official website or mobile app, has raised concerns worldwide. DeepSeek is known to host, collect and secure much data on servers located in China.

While the Interior Ministry’s move on Tuesday did not explicitly ban the use of DeepSeek, many government institutions, including the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of National Defense, National Election Commission, National Police Agency and the Supreme Prosecutors' Office restricted the usage of DeepSeek's AI chatbot on their networks soon after.

Banks, schools and companies have also begun restricting access to the service. Hyundai Motor Group sent an internal notice to its employees in the company’s Yangjae headquarters in southern Seoul notifying them that access to DeepSeek through the company’s network has been restricted over privacy issues and “concerns of other key information leaks.”

BY CHO YONG-JUN, YONHAP [[email protected]]