South Korea Bans Downloads of DeepSeek, the Chinese A.I. App

The South Korean government said on Monday that it had temporarily suspended new downloads of an artificial intelligence chatbot made by DeepSeek, the Chinese company that has sent shock waves through the tech world.

On Monday night, the app was not available in the Apple or Google app store in South Korea, although DeepSeek was still accessible via a web browser. Regulators said the app service would resume after they had ensured it complied with South Korea’s laws on protecting personal information.

The Chinese chatbot has topped the charts of most downloaded apps around the world since its release last month. The app is powered by an A.I. system whose performance rivals top products made by American companies and was built, DeepSeek said, for a fraction of their cost.

DeepSeek’s claims that it built its technology with far fewer expensive computer chips than companies typically use sent U.S. tech stocks tumbling last month and provoked a debate over whether Washington has failed in its attempts to block China’s access to such chips.

DeepSeek’s success has thrust the little-known company, which is backed by a stock trading firm, into the spotlight. In China, DeepSeek has been heralded as a hero of the country’s tech industry. The company’s founder, Liang Wenfeng, met China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, along with other tech executives on Monday.

But outside China, the app’s popularity has worried regulators over DeepSeek’s security, censorship and management of sensitive data.

The app had become one of South Korea’s most popular downloads in the artificial intelligence category. This month, South Korea directed many government employees not to use DeepSeek products on official devices.

Government agencies in Taiwan and Australia have also told workers not to use DeepSeek’s products, over security concerns.

South Korea’s Personal Information Protection Commission said it had identified problems with how the app processed personal information, adding that it decided “it would inevitably take a considerable amount of time to correct” them. To address these concerns, DeepSeek had appointed an agent in South Korea last week, the regulator said.

The Chinese government has always required Chinese companies to conduct overseas operations in strict compliance with local laws and regulations, Guo Jiakun, a spokesman for China’s foreign ministry, said at a briefing on Monday.

“We also hope that relevant countries will avoid taking the approach of generalizing and politicizing economic, trade and technological issues,” Mr. Guo said.

Li You contributed research.