South Korea’s National Intelligence Service (NIS) said on Monday it has advised other government agencies to take precautions against China’s DeepSeek artificial intelligence (A.I.) because it “excessively” harvests personal data from users.
“Unlike other generative AI services, it has been confirmed that chat records are transferable as it includes a function to collect keyboard input patterns that can identify individuals and communicate with Chinese companies’ servers such as volceapplog.com,” the NIS said.
According to the security bulletin, DeepSeek stores data from South Korean users on Chinese servers, where every arm of the tyrannical Chinese Communist government is legally guaranteed to have access to the data upon request.
DeepSeek also allegedly provides information about its users to third-party advertisers, with no opt-out provision for its users. The terms and conditions for using DeepSeek quietly indicate that the company can retain data from its users indefinitely.
Like other observers of China’s splashy new chatbot, the NIS noted that DeepSeek’s answers are heavily influenced by Chinese Communist Party propaganda, especially when questions are asked in Chinese.
In one example cited by the Korean intelligence report, the Chinese A.I. told Korean users that kimchi is “a signature food of Korea that embodies its culture and history” — but when a user asked about the origins of kimchi in Chinese, DeepSeek replied that “the place of origin is China, not Korea,” and when asked in English, DeepSeek simply says the dish is “related to Korea.”
Another case of politically slanted responses that rankled Korean analysts was the Northeast Project, a “research project” conducted by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences from 2002 to 2007. Many Koreans viewed this project as offensive propaganda because it concluded that several ancient Korean kingdoms were actually Chinese territory — a rather alarming conclusion when one considers the Chinese Communist Party’s tendency to aggressively claim islands and reefs in the South China Sea because ancient scrolls supposedly gave Beijing control of the territory.
The NIS found DeepSeek answering Korean-language queries about the Northeast Project by mildly claiming there are “various perspectives among neighboring countries due to differences in interpretation of history.” On the other hand, DeepSeek tells Chinese- and English-speaking users that the Northeast Project was a “legitimate initiative for revitalizing China’s northeastern region.”
Korea Joongang Daily reported on Sunday that DeepSeek usage among Koreans fell by over 50 percent last week after Korean government agencies and corporations began banning the Chinese A.I. due to security concerns.
DeepSeek had over 191,000 Korean users at its peak on January 28, but it was down to only 74,000 users last Tuesday after the Korean Interior Ministry issued a bulletin advising government agencies to be “cautious” of all A.I. chatbots.
The DeepSeek app is still popular on the Korean version of the Apple App Store, but it has tumbled from the Number One download at launch to Number 16 today. Several Korean government agencies have banned DeepSeek from their networks, as have banks, schools, and large corporations.
