South Korea ministries, police block DeepSeek access on security concerns

South Korea's industry ministry has temporarily blocked employee access to Chinese Artificial Intelligence (AI)startup DeepSeek due to security concerns, a ministry official said, as the government urges caution on generative AI services.

The government issued a notice calling for ministries and agencies to exercise caution about using AI services including DeepSeek and ChatGPT at work, officials said.

State-run Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power said it had blocked use of AI services including DeepSeek earlier this month. The defence ministry has also blocked access to DeepSeek on its computers that are for military use, officials said on Thursday.

The foreign ministry has restricted access to DeepSeek in computers that connect to external networks, Yonhap News Agency said. The ministry said it cannot confirm specific security measures.

DeepSeek did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment. It was not immediately clear if the ministries had taken any actions against ChatGPT.

The ban makes South Korea the latest government to warn about or place restrictions on DeepSeek.

Australia and Taiwan have banned DeepSeek this week from all government devices over concerns that the Chinese artificial intelligence startup poses security risks.

Italy's data protection authority ordered DeepSeek in January to block its chatbot in the country after the Chinese startup failed to address the regulator's concerns over its privacy policy. Some other governments in Europe, the US and India are also examining implications of using DeepSeek. South Korea's information privacy watchdog plans to ask DeepSeek about how the personal information of users is managed.

DeepSeek launched its R1 chatbot last month, claiming it matches the capacity of Artificial Intelligence (AI) pacesetters in the United States for a fraction of the investment, upending the global industry.

"Blocking measures for DeepSeek have been implemented specifically for military work-related PCs with Internet," a defence ministry official told AFP.

The ministry, which oversees active-duty soldiers deployed against the nuclear-armed North, has also "reiterated the security precautions regarding the use of generative AI for each unit and soldier, taking into account security and technical concerns," it added.

South Korea's police told AFP they had also blocked access to DeepSeek, while the trade ministry said that access had been temporarily restricted on all its PCs.

The trade, finance, unification and foreign ministries also all said they had blocked the app or had taken unspecified measures.

Bans 'not excessive'

Last week, Italy launched an investigation into DeepSeek's R1 model and blocked it from processing Italian users' data.
Australia has also banned DeepSeek from all government devices on the advice of security agencies.

Kim Jong-hwa, a professor at Cheju Halla University's artificial intelligence department, told AFP that amid growing rivalry between the United States and China he suspected "political factors" could be influencing the reaction to DeepSeek — but said bans were still justified.

"From a technical standpoint, AI models like ChatGPT also face numerous security-related issues that have not yet been fully addressed," he said.

"Given that China operates under a communist regime, I question whether they consider security issues as much as OpenAI does when developing innovative technologies," he said. "We cannot currently assess how much attention has been paid to security concerns by DeepSeek when developing its chatbot. Therefore, I believe that taking proactive measures is not too excessive."

Beijing on Thursday hit back against the ban, insisting the Chinese government "will never require enterprises or individuals to illegally collect or store data."

"China has always opposed the generalisation of national security and the politicisation of economic, trade and technological issues," foreign ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun said.

Beijing would also "firmly safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of Chinese enterprises," Guo vowed.

Agence France-Presse / Reuters