South Korea’s state departments will block access to Deepseek

A surge of interest in the language models of the Chinese company Deepseek is not limited to a private audience, but when it comes to the public sector, national security may be at the stake. Given not the most friendly relations of the PRC and South Korea, officials of the latter of the countries began to close access to Deepseek for employees of state departments.

Image source: Unsplash, Solen Feyissa

As Business Korea notes, from the fourth of February, the Ministry of Public Administration and South Korea’s security appealed to state departments and 17 municipalities of the country demanding to carefully treat the use of generative artificial intelligence, including Deepseek. Since February February, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Defense, the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy blocked access to Deepseek. From the sixth of February, the Ministry of Economics and Finance joined them.

Other financial departments of South Korea also limited access to Deepseek. The state bank specializing in international trade blocked access to Deepseek resources since January 31. Commercial banks and financial companies have refused to work with Deepseek since February third. Kepco KPS energy company, which runs nuclear power plants, has refused to use Deepseek among the first representatives of private business in South Korea. Representatives of South Korean companies and departments note that they are afraid of personal data leaks through the Chinese chatbot interface.

South Korea is not the first country to decide on such measures. The Australian government forbade the use of DeepSeek services on departmental devices and systems, Italy removed the same application from the national segment of popular applications stores among the first. Taiwan followed the example of Italy, and Japan, Great Britain and the Netherlands are preparing to do this in the foreseeable future.