The author analyzes in detail an example of cultural transmission and transformation of mathematical knowledge: the treatment of problems pertaining to the rectangular triangle as found in the Chinese mathematical tradition and reformulated, but not translated (classical Chinese remaining the written language of scholarly works in Korea), by a 19th-century Korean mathematician and high official of the Yi government, Nam Pyong-gil. Horng nicely situates his comparative study in the socio-intellectual context of the Chinese and Korean schools of evidential research and mathematical studies per se. Although both cultures tried to explain Chinese traditional mathematical texts by algebraic methods, Horng argues that Nam paid much attention to the dissemination of mathematics, thus raising funds for printing mathematical treatises and doing research on the subject with his contemporaries.