South Korea’s Personal Information Protection Commission has begun reviewing how Chinese electric vehicle maker Zeekr collects and transfers personal data ahead of the company’s domestic launch.
The review focuses on the Zeekr 7X’s connected services, including voice commands, real-time location, travel routes and driving records. Regulators are examining which companies collect and process the information, where it is stored and whether Chinese entities can access data remotely.
Zeekr initially identified China as the destination for data generated by the vehicle’s voice-recognition system. The company later changed the destination to Singapore and added an effective date to its privacy policy after questions were raised about the disclosure.
The commission said the policy change alone may not settle the issue. It must determine whether Zeekr Korea collects information from South Korean vehicles and transfers it overseas, or whether the company’s Chinese headquarters or overseas contractors collect the data directly. Regulators will also examine whether remote access from China constitutes an additional cross-border transfer.
Under Zeekr’s current data-processing structure, voice commands are handled by an affiliate of Chinese voice-recognition company iFlytek. The information is transferred to iFlytek’s Singapore subsidiary, which uses a cloud service operated by Sparkoo, an overseas entity affiliated with Huawei Cloud.
Other vehicle-generated data follows a different route. Zeekr’s privacy policy lists vehicle identification numbers, real-time and parking locations, travel routes, driving records, vehicle status and command requests as information that may be transferred to Zeekr’s headquarters in China and the Geely Automobile Research Institute. Geely is Zeekr’s parent company.
The data may be used to provide and manage connected services, improve vehicle quality and conduct research and development. Although drivers can disable the voice assistant, activate a full privacy mode or withdraw from their Zeekr account, the company warns that some connected services may become unavailable if users refuse cross-border data transfers.
The review comes as connected-car use expands in South Korea. The country had 11.04 million vehicle telematics subscriptions in June, up 10.1% from a year earlier. With about 26.64 million registered vehicles, more than 40% are estimated to be connected to the internet.
A similar issue arose when BYD entered the South Korean market. The company later said domestic users’ personal information was stored on cloud servers in South Korea that could not be accessed by its Chinese cloud operation. It also limited the information transferred to China and specified the purposes for those transfers.
Regulators are increasingly examining connected vehicles because they collect detailed information about people’s movements. The issue is further complicated when a vehicle’s owner is not the person driving it, such as in shared family use or valet services.
Zeekr began taking orders for the 7X, its first model in South Korea, in June. Pre-orders have exceeded 1,500, with deliveries scheduled to begin in September. If the commission finds violations, it can order corrective measures, impose administrative fines or suspend overseas data transfers.
