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A Study on the Epistolary Exchange Between Modern Korean Sinologist Lee Seung-hee and Chinese Literati

  • The Journal of Study on Language and Culture of Korea and China
  • Abbr : JSLCKC
  • 2026, (81), pp.313~336
  • DOI : 10.16874/jslckc.2026..81.012
  • Publisher : Korean Society of Study on Chinese Languge and Culture
  • Research Area : Humanities > Chinese Language and Literature
  • Received : July 10, 2026
  • Accepted : August 20, 2026
  • Published : August 31, 2026

Yuan Yi 1

1延边大学 外国语学院 外国语言学及应用语言学专业

Accredited

ABSTRACT

In the early 20th century, amid the drastic transformation of East Asia’s geopolitical landscape and the intensification of Japanese colonial rule, numerous Korean Confucian scholars who upheld the orthodoxy of Zhu Xi Neo-Confucianism and remained steadfast in their national righteousness fled into exile in China, forming a highly representative cohort of extraterritorial Classical Chinese writers in modern East Asia. As a core figure of this exiled community, Lee Seung-hee carried out multi-dimensional intellectual dialogues with Chinese political dignitaries, Confucian movement elites, and traditional scholar-literati through Classical Chinese epistolary writing during his exile. Taking the 53 letters compiled in Daegyejipas its primary research corpus, this paper draws upon multiple theoretical frameworks: postcolonial theory, diaspora theory, and Bakhtinian dialogism. It adopts the analytical method of "inferring interlocutors’ positions from extant replies" to reconstruct the interactive context of Sino-Korean literati exchanges, and systematically examines the ideological connotations, dialogical features, and literary value of Lee’s Classical Chinese correspondence. The study demonstrates that Lee Seung-hee’s letters are far more than one-way social documents. Instead, they constitute a "homeland on paper" constructed by a diasporic subject in Classical Chinese, serving as a covert site of resistance against Western cultural hegemony in the postcolonial condition. Centered on Confucian philosophical principles, his cross-cultural dialogues not only reconstruct the Confucian discourse on republicanism, but also realize the reverse dissemination of Korean Neo-Confucian thought into Chinese academic circles. This paper redresses the relative scholarly neglect of the epistolary genre in existing research on extraterritorial Classical Chinese writing, and provides a fresh frame of reference for understanding the spiritual resilience of the modern East Asian Confucian community and the underlying dynamics of Sino-Korean literary interactions.

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