This special issue of the Sungkyun Journal of East Asian Studies reflects the journal’s renewed focus—since 2019—on pre-1945 humanities topics within the “Sinographic cosmopolis,” a cultural sphere shaped by literary Sinitic (LS). Vietnam, as part of this world, has increasingly appeared in recent submissions, prompting the editors to assemble five studies on Vietnam’s engagement with LS. 

The issue opens with Nguyễn Tuấn Cường’s study of how early modern Vietnamese scholars read and annotated Confucian texts. Focusing on the Tứ thư ước giải, he uncovers rare examples of vernacular Sinitic (baihua) grammar embedded in otherwise classical commentary and explores why such materials are so scarce in Vietnamese sources.

Next, Nguyễn Hoàng Yến analyzes the 1903 text Nam Nữ Giao Hợp Phụ Luận, introducing it to English-language scholarship. She investigates why its author chose to publish a treatise on sexual intercourse in LS rather than in Nôm, French, or Quốc Ngữ, even at the height of French colonial influence.

Drawing on expertise in Japanese kundoku glossing, Nguyễn Thị Thu Huyền examines the bilingual LS–Nôm Luận ngữ ước giải. Her article, the journal’s first to integrate Nôm data, shows how Vietnamese commentators identified and read proper nouns in classical texts.

In the fourth article, Yong-tai Kim and Rahel Plassen survey South Korean scholarship on Vietnamese LS materials, noting how Vietnamese sources serve Korean scholars as a comparative “historical mirror.” They highlight current research trends as well as institutional obstacles within Korean academia.

The final contribution, by Alan Dai, translates a 1922–23 serialized LS narrative, Record of the History of Korean Aristocrat Lady Yi Adrift. The work illustrates the surprising longevity of LS in Vietnam and the continued cultural links between Vietnam and Korea well into the 1920s.

Read the complete issue here.