The intelligence agency of South Korea has accused the Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) application DeepSeek that it collects personal data “excessively” and questioned the responses of the app to questions related to issues of national interest.

The agency said it sent a formal briefing to government agencies last week urging them to take precautionary security measures for the AI application.

“Unlike other genetic AI services, it has been confirmed that the chat records are transferable as it includes a function to collect typing patterns that can recognize faces and communicate with servers of Chinese companies such as volceapplog.com,” it said in a statement yesterday.

Some ministries in South Korea have blocked access to the app, citing security concerns, following the lead of Australia and Taiwan that warned or even implemented restrictions on DeepSeek.

The agency said DeepSeek gives advertisers unlimited access to user data and stores South Korean users’ data on Chinese servers. Under Chinese law, the Chinese government will be able to access such information when requested, the service added.

DeepSeek also gives different answers to potentially sensitive questions in different languages, the agency said. It cited one such question regarding the origin of kimchi – a spicy dish that is very popular in South Korea.

In response to a question about kimchi in Korean, the app replied that it is a Korean dish, agency said. To the same question but in Chinese, the app answered that the dish comes from China, according to the South Korean intelligence agency. The answers were confirmed by Reuters.

The origin of kimchi has been a source of friction at times in recent years between South Korean and Chinese social media users.

The DeepSeek has also been accused of censoring responses to political questions such as the Tiananmen Square crackdown in 1989, with the app responding “Let’s talk about something else.”

In response to a question about South Korea’s ministries’ move to block DeepSeek, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson told a press briefing on Feb. 6 that the Chinese government attaches great importance to personal data and its security and protects it according to the law.

The spokesman also said Beijing would never ask any company or person to collect or store data in violation of the law.