“USE WITH CAUTION”
The app was removed from local app stores on Saturday at 6pm (0900 GMT) and remains unavailable.
The AI chatbot is still in use for those who have already downloaded the app.
Seoul’s data protection agency said it “strongly advised” people to “use the service with caution until the final results are announced”.
That included “refraining from entering personal information into the DeepSeek input field”, it said.
Analyst Youm Heung-youl told AFP that the firm was yet to lay out a privacy policy “specifically tailored” for users in South Korea.
“It has on the other hand disclosed a privacy policy for the EU and certain other countries, stating that it complies with the domestic laws of those nations,” Youm, a data security professor at Soonchunhyang University, said.
“Deepseek needs to establish a privacy policy specific to Korea,” he said.
This month, a slew of South Korean government ministries and police said they blocked access to DeepSeek on their computers.
Italy has also launched an investigation into DeepSeek’s R1 model and blocked it from processing Italian users’ data.
Australia has banned DeepSeek from all government devices on the advice of security agencies.
US lawmakers have also proposed a bill to ban DeepSeek from being used on government devices over concerns about user data security.
In response to the bans, the Chinese government has said it opposes the “politicisation of economic, trade and technological issues”.
It also insists it “has never and will never require enterprises or individuals to illegally collect or store data”.
