Link: https://www.rt.com/news/612832-south-korea-bans-deepseek/
On February 17th, 2025, South Korea’s national data protection watchdog announced a temporary suspension of China’s free AI service, Deepseek, until authorities complete their review of the Chinese startup’s data collection practices and implement improvements and remedies. The Personal Information Protection Commission (PIPC) imposed the restriction after discovering the app was transferring South Korean user data to ByteDance, the Chinese company behind TikTok, the regulator said on Saturday. Korea’s data watchdog has “strongly advised” them to “use the service with caution“ until the final results of the probe are announced. 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.
This is important because it shows how South Korea is treating China differently than it would any other country for the same data security practices. This shows how South Korea is taking a similar route the United States took by politicizing economic, trade, and technological issues. This also shows how poor South Korea’s relations are with China that they do not trust them whatsoever and are treating them as a hostile nation by guarding their data.
This relates to what we learned in class because it shows how bandwagon states such as South Korea to the United States simply go along with whatever policies the dominant state chooses. It also relates to how Korea has had a history of appeasing the more powerful nations around it in order to survive, like how it did that with China in its early history, with Japan in the 1940s, and now with the United States today.