Yan Zhuang
It’s an open secret that countries spy on each other. That’s probably why world leaders almost never talk about espionage in public.
But over the weekend, it was the punchline of a joke between China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, and President Lee Jae Myung of South Korea.
The joke revolved around two cellphones Mr. Xi gave Mr. Lee — one for him, one for his wife — during their meeting in the South Korean city of Gyeongju on Saturday. The phones were manufactured by the Chinese company Xiaomi, with Korean-made displays, a spokesman for Mr. Xi said as the two leaders inspected them with news cameras rolling.
Mr. Lee picked up one of the phones, still in its box, and admired it. Then he asked how good the security was.
Mr. Xi laughed. “You can check if there’s a backdoor,” he said, referring to preinstalled software that allows a third party to monitor a cellphone. That prompted Mr. Lee to laugh and clap his hands in apparent delight.
The exchange was notable in part because Mr. Xi is rarely seen speaking off the cuff in public. It also deviated from a “sort of old-fashioned gentlemen’s agreement” in which world leaders typically pretend that covert activities aren’t happening, said John Delury, a historian of China based in Seoul.
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