South Korea's Lee takes selfie with Xi using gifted phone

BEIJING: 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 three selfies of himself, Xi and their wives on social media platform X on Monday during his visit to Beijing.

The photos were taken with a phone gifted to him by the Chinese leader last year, Lee said.

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

“Thanks to them, I got the shot of a lifetime,” he added.

“I will communicate more frequently and collaborate more closely going forward.”

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

When Lee asked if the communication line on the device was secure, the Chinese leader urged him to “check if there is a backdoor” – referring to pre-installed software that could allow third-party monitoring.

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

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”.

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.

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

One user quipped: “Sir, do you know Nicolas Maduro used the same phone?”

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.