{"id":34898,"date":"2026-01-07T06:04:34","date_gmt":"2026-01-07T06:04:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/?p=34898"},"modified":"2026-01-07T06:04:34","modified_gmt":"2026-01-07T06:04:34","slug":"lee-snaps-xi-selfie-with-chinese-backdoor-phone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/?p=34898","title":{"rendered":"Lee snaps Xi selfie with Chinese ‘backdoor’ phone"},"content":{"rendered":"
South Korean President Lee Jae Myung snapped a selfie with Xi Jinping using a smartphone gifted to him by the Chinese leader, who had joked at their last meeting that the device might be capable of spying.<\/p>\n

Lee posted a selfie of himself, Xi and their wives on social media platform X on Monday during a visit to Beijing.<\/p>\n

“A selfie with President Xi Jinping and his wife, taken with the Xiaomi I received as a gift in Gyeongju,” Lee wrote.<\/p>\n

“Thanks to them, I got the shot of a lifetime,” he said.<\/p>\n

“I will communicate more frequently and collaborate more closely going forward.”<\/p>\n

In the selfie, all four first families are seen smiling.<\/p>\n

Lee’s office also posted a short YouTube video of the scene, with Xi complimenting the South Korean leader’s photo skills.<\/p>\n

The Xiaomi handset made headlines in November when Xi cracked a joke to Lee on the sidelines of an APEC summit in South Korea.<\/p>\n

When Lee asked if the communication line on the device was secure, the Chinese leader urged him to “check if there is a backdoor” \u2014\u00a0referring to pre-installed software that could allow third-party monitoring.<\/p>\n

The banter was a rare display of humour from the Chinese leader, who is not often seen making jokes, let alone about espionage.<\/p>\n

The South Korean President has said Xi was “unexpectedly quite good at making jokes”.<\/p>\n

During their ninety-minute summit on Monday, Xi urged Lee to join Beijing in making the “right strategic choices” in a world that is “becoming more complex and turbulent”.<\/p>\n

Lee’s visit to China followed a US military operation in Caracas that captured Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and brought him to New York to face narco-trafficking charges — a raid condemned by Beijing and Pyongyang.<\/p>\n

Lee’s selfie post sparked heavy interest online and was shared more than 3,400 times in the first few hours.<\/p>\n

One user quipped: “Sir, Do you know Nicolas Maduro used the same phone?”<\/p>\n

The South Korean leader, who took office in June following the impeachment and removal of his predecessor over a martial law declaration, has sought to improve ties with China after a years-long diplomatic deep freeze.<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

South Korean President Lee Jae Myung snapped a selfie with Xi Jinping using a smartphone gifted to him by the Chinese leader, who had joked at their last meeting that the device might be capable of spying. Lee posted a selfie of himself, Xi and their wives on social media platform X on Monday during […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34898","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34898","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=34898"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34898\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=34898"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=34898"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=34898"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}