I’m reposting @welmaris’ timeline here for our reference. Thanks, @welmaris! This is really helpful. You saved me the work.
Timeline summary:
-1987: Crown Prince Lee Gon born in KOC
-1987 Oct 28: Lee Ji Hun born in ROK (LG parallel)
-1990 May 27: Jeong Tae Eul born in ROK
-1994 Dec 08: Evil Prince arrives in Seoul ROK after assassinating King of KOC; Evil Prince meets ROK parallel of KOC king; Evil Prince kills ROK parallel of himself; Evil Prince and Ji Hun (ROK parallel of child LG) meet; battered wife identifies dead husband (ROK parallel of KOC king); police try to contact battered wife (widow) about her son; Evil Prince tells battered wife her son drowned
-1994 Dec 28: Date of death engraved on Lee Ji Hun’s crypt in ROK
-1995 May 25: KOC Newspaper headline about Evil Prince’s tragic end
-2004+: At KOC salt farm, Evil Prince meets laborer / regicide co-conspirator. Laborer hasn’t seen Evil Prince in more than a decade. Evil Prince says he wants to show co-conspirator a new world.
-2019 Sept 10: LG is sitting at his desk in KOC
-2019 Nov 11: In ROK Lieutenant Jeong Tae Eul is issued a police ID
Request: Can somebody please take a guess and tell us what the last item was on this form? This was Lee Yim’s personal information presented during his police interrogation. Thanks!
The last line said 1995 May 25 June 27 but it couldn’t be his Date of Death. The camera shot was purposely blurred.
Here’s @welmaris’ explanation on the timeline.
I thought I’d document a timeline here, since the thread for episodes 1-2 is so long.
Evil Prince arrives in Seoul, wearing bloodied clothing and muddy shoes. The implication is that he’s come directly from fleeing the assassination and entering the portal in the bamboo forest. He looks at a daily newspaper which is dated 1994-12-8. He meets the ROK version of the king (his younger half-brother, whom he’d just killed in KOC). ROK parallel brother/king mistakes Evil Prince for his older half brother. Evil Prince asks, “So, where is your brother right now?”
Scene immediately following is Evil Prince, alone and still in bloody clothing & hand bandage, letting himself into an apartment where he finds the ROK version of himself, wheelchair-bound and suffering from aphasia. Evil Prince kills him by snapping his neck. [Camera does a slow counter-clockwise tip-to-the-side view of the room.] ROK version of child LG enters the apartment, sees Evil Prince standing and thinks he’s his uncle, but then sees his real uncle in the wheelchair. He grabs a couple sharp lengths of rebar to defend himself, Evil Prince makes a menacing speech, and the scene ends.We see a woman with a battered face and bruised neck identifying the body of her husband at the police morgue. He was drunk at the time of death, and is suspected to have been the victim of a hit-and-run. She asks to be allowed to go back to work since she confirmed the body is her husband; she also states her preference he be cremated at government expense rather than having the body released to her. We see her return to her apartment, and she notices the mess her husband left on the table. She says, “Well, at least he had a meal before his death.” The implication is that this is the same day her husband died.
She gets up and starts clearing the table, and we see Evil Prince behind her, sitting in the wheelchair. The camera focuses on his bloody signet ring and bandaged hand. The implication is that he hasn’t yet cleaned up following the assassination, so it is still the day he arrived in Seoul (1994-12-8 per daily newspaper). Woman laughs as she cleans dishes, talking to herself about how she’d prayed her husband would die, but someone else killed him before she did it or her husband killed her. Evil Prince stands up from his seat and approaches the woman, who backs up then falls into a sitting position. Scene ends.
Episode 2 shows us the continuation of this scene as a memory of a middle-aged woman buying flowers to commemorate her dead son’s birthday. (She looks affluent, and there’s a man in a suit waiting for her outside by a car.) We see the memory of her younger self, the battered (widowed) wife, backing away from Evil Prince as he walks toward her. As he draws close to her, the doorbell rings and a police officer announces his presence, saying he’s come about her son. Evil Prince informs her that her son has tripped at a reservoir and drowned, and threatens that since her husband and son have both had suspicious deaths, she would be suspected. He asks if she wants redemption. She does not open the door for the police officer. The memory ends, and we see the middle-aged woman leave flowers at an outdoor mausoleum. The camera focuses on one crypt with a photo of a young boy, and the grave is marked “Lee Ji Hun, 1987.10.28 ~ 1994.12.28. [Note: There was already a flower arrangement in the vase affixed to that crypt, which explains why his mother laid her flowers on the ground.]
We see a laborer at a salt farm who has extensive damage to the skin on his right shoulder. We recognize him as one of Evil Prince’s co-conspirators. He’s the one who’d told Evil Prince of the King’s location when Evil Prince was examining the Four Tiger Sword in the King’s bedroom, who walked in point position as the conspirators approached the King in the treasure room, whom the King recognized by saying “You…” Laborer picks up a newspaper to fan his injured shoulder, reads something, and throws down the newspaper with strong emotion.
As he walks away to resume his work, we see the newspaper headline, “Former King’s Bastard Lee Lim Meets Tragic End.” The newspaper is dated 1995-5-25. (We had already seen that a body wearing a suit, Evil Prince’s signet ring, and with a cut hand washed up in KOC.) As the laborer works, the camera tips and the scenery first goes a bit counter clockwise, then a full circle clockwise accompanied by a sped up day to sunset to night to day to sunset, all to the sounds of a ticking clock, clanking, ticking clock again, then a click as the scenery settles. The laborer’s movements weren’t affected by the break in the space-time continuum. Evil Prince walks up behind him, umbrella in hand, and the handle of the umbrella is his half of the magic bamboo flute. The laborer has extensive scars (rather than sloughing skin) on his right shoulder, implying it is the same character, but it is a different actor. Laborer bows to Evil Prince, says he believed His Highness was still alive, had last seen him more than a decade ago, and is amazed Evil Prince doesn’t appear to have aged since then. Evil Prince says to laborer, “Let me show you a new world.” (This same man is seen in ep. 2 waiting for Evil Prince, holding the bamboo-flute-handled umbrella as Evil Prince paints the historic building.)
Lee Gon, in KOC, sits at his desk looking at the ID card for Lieutenant Jeong Tae Eul and says he’s now older than her. She was born 1990-05-27. The card was issued 2019.11.11. We see a digital date & time clock on LG’s desk showing the date 2019-09-10. (In the picture on the card LG has in KOC, TE has her hair pulled back. On the card we later see with her in ROK, her hair is down in the picture.)(During interrogation at the police station, LG tells TE he’s three years older than her [so, born 1987].)
Is it the date on the document at the bottom? I see it as 1995.6.27.
Am I reading it wrong?
You’re right! Thanks!! I made the correction already. 🙂
You’re welcome! 🙂
I’ve moved over from another thread my answer to a question from Snowflower.
@Snowflower, it is suspicious that on the crypt the date of the child’s death is different than the date Evil Uncle told battered woman that her son had drowned. Some reasons could be:
1) The police were mistaken about the identity of the child about whom they wanted to talk to battered woman.
2) Time magically passed between Evil Prince’s arrival in ROK and the drowning of Ji Hun.
3) Someone doctored the records of Ji Hun’s death.
I’m more likely to believe the latter.
Considering the first possibility, there must have been some identification on the child that linked him to his mother. Evil Prince sounded certain that the drowned child was battered woman’s son. Evil Prince had looked at a photo of mom and son before he stepped on it.
Evil Prince wears the same bloody clothes during the deaths of the KOC king, Evil Prince’s parallel in ROK, the king’s parallel in ROK, and Ji Hun, which suggests the four killings happened in rapid succession. I wonder if the camera tip after Evil Prince snapped his parallel’s neck is meant to show time being affected: it must mean something, or else the director wouldn’t have bothered. I don’t think it means a time shift such as a speed-up of 20 days after Evil Prince arrived in ROK and met the king parallel. Evil Prince let himself into the apartment with a set of keys and tossed them aside before killing his own parallel. Those keys would have belonged to the ROK king parallel, and Evil Prince took possession of them when he killed that man. Ji Hun entered the apartment when dead Evil Prince parallel was still there, slumped in the wheelchair, so his fatal encounter with Evil Prince was on the same day his father and uncle were killed. After identifying the body of her dead husband, battered wife comes into the apartment and comments on the mess he’d left on the table from his last meal before death, further confirmation that all three deaths happened on the same day. So if there wasn’t a break in time, what is hinted at by the camera tipping after Evil Prince killed his parallel? I think it marks the beginning of Evil Prince not aging while in ROK.
I believe the discrepancy between Ji Hun’s actual date of death and what appears on his crypt is the result of Evil Prince manipulating records. He asks Ji Hun’s mom if she wants redemption instead of being accused of the deaths of her husband and son. His adjusting the date of her son’s death to a day other than the same one on which her husband died would be one thing to deflect suspicion from her.
There is another discrepancy observed in the timeline. Evil Prince kills his parallel in ROK on 08 Dec 1994, but news of the tragic end of Lee Lim (really the body of his parallel) isn’t announced in the KOC newspapers until May 25, 1995. I don’t believe this is because time moves differently in one world compared to the other (although individuals can travel differently in time within or between those worlds). I also don’t think the body was stashed somewhere between the time of killing and the time it was dumped in the water in KOC, as evidence of months of storage would show up during autopsy. I also don’t think the body was in the water for months, because the clothes and corpse were in too good condition. Based on the conversation between OCL and Prince Buyeong/Professor Lee Jong In, I think the news of the discovery of the body was suppressed until they could craft a story and timeline that would benefit the monarchy.
The last 2 Korean characters after the date 사망 means “dead”. So I assume that date is the date of death?
I think it is correct that the field headings on the police form are intentionally blurred, but we can still gather some facts. I’m going to flex my genealogy research skills, so here we go.
-Per the logo on the paperwork, the police interrogation is happening in the Republic of Korea.
-Evil Prince has been apprehended by the police shortly after someone has been seriously injured or killed. Evil Prince does not appear hurt, but he’s splattered in blood, even on his face. When he arrived in ROK the first time, bloodied, he’d at least managed to clean his face. The pattern of blood spatters on his shirt collar are different than they were after the 1994 assassination of the king in KOC.
-Evil Prince responds to questions in a way that relates to the Kingdom of Corea, not the Republic of Korea, although he doesn’t speak of the Kingdom of Corea by name. Lieutenant Jeong Tae Eul and Officer Kang Shin Jae keep poker faces, not reacting when he tells the tale about the magic flute. Shin Jae says he is most sceptical about Lee Lim’s reported age of 69 (English sub 70) since he looks much younger. Lee Lim says he took the magic flute from his brother, and Tae Eul immediately asks, “So, did you kill your brother?” She must know some background information about the history of the magic flute if “take from” equates with “kill” in her mind. In his answer he speaks of his brother the King (not his ROK parallel’s brother, the drunken wife beater), so it is clear he is talking about his actions in the Kingdom of Corea. He mentions two worlds, and his expectation that his nephew would have to face the legend of the magic flute. We don’t see Tae Eul’s or Shin Jae’s reactions. My strong suspicion is that they’ve already met Lee Gon by the time this interrogation takes place in 2020. Lee Gon arrived in ROK sometime after 2019-09-10, the date we saw on his desk clock in KOC.
-I believe the heading on the form reads Personal Information.
-Evil Prince is being addressed by the name Lee Lim, which is his KOC name. (We don’t know the full name of his ROK parallel self. When the ROK parallel-king recognizes his face during their encounter, he addresses Evil Prince as hyung, but the English sub is Lim instead of ‘older brother’. Other parallel sets we encounter [Lee Gon/Lee Ji Hun, Jo Young/Jo Eun Sup, Myung Seung A/Myung Na Ri] share surnames but have different given names, so hmmmmmmmm…but we know Lee Lim’s ROK parallel would have the same surname as his brother’s son, Lee Ji Hun.)
-Lee Lim’s current age, based on his birth date, is listed as 69. That puts this police interrogation in the year 2020.
-The field to the far left in the second line has an entry with a distinctive pattern: ******-1096424. The South Korean Resident Registration Number (RRN) is 13 digits (six digits, a dash, seven digits). The first six digits are birth date, so his would be 510227. The seventh digit, immediately following the dash, indicates sex and the century in which born: 1=males born 1900-1999. The next two digits (second and third after the dash) refer to the regional government where the birth was registered: 09 refers to Busan. The fourth and fifth digits after the dash indicate the community center in which the birth was registered. The second to the last digit (12th overall) is a sequential number used to differentiate those of the same sex born on the same day in the same location (this RRN has 2 in this position, meaning this is the second male born on the same day and registered in the same location). The last digit is a check digit, used to verify that the number has been transcribed correctly. Most importantly, without an RRN, Lee Lim would have great difficulty functioning in ROK. He’s probably using the RRN issued to his ROK parallel. I find it interesting that the main palace of KOC is in Busan, and ROK parallel to Lee Lim was also born in Busan. Great consistency, Art Direction!
-The box Local is checked (not Foreigner).
-Three of the fields are marked None. It would be typical for a Personal Information form like this to have fields for things like address, next of kin or emergency contact info, phone number, etc.
-The information entered in the large field at the bottom (lots of room for an extensive entry) is just the date 1995-06-27. We don’t know what this refers to because the field label is blurred. It is a date in the past, because the interrogation is taking place in 2020. Tae Eul looks at this date during the interrogation when Lee Lim says he hasn’t aged since the winter of 1994.
Additions to timeline:
-1995-06-27 something notable happens, and Evil Prince is connected
-2020 Evil Prince is in police custody after an incident involving bloodshed
@nrllee, I used my hangul keyboard and Papago, and you are right! Good catch!! I suppose we should update the timeline addition to read:
-1995-06-27 a death occurs and Evil Prince is connected
I suppose that the later date of the child’s death might also reflect that he was comatose for several years, not having been killed outright (similar to Lee Gon in RoK) and died without regaining consciousness. But I doubt the uncle would be that careless twice.
Why is the form marked “top secret?”
Thank you, @Welmaris!
So I ventured to be a part of this series after getting piqued by the hype around it . Two episodes down and although it is still entertaining me,I couldn’t just clear off many doubts from my head. To get my answers I scrabbled through dozens of comments in quite a few sites. And each time a new theory would come forward, I will pull my hair in frustration as my mind just gives up. Ultimately it is all mess inside my brain right now processing various assumptions😂😂 .Infact now I m having even more speculations than before.
After CLOY finished airing two months ago I wasn’t able to complete a single drama and finally thought it would be a better option to live watch…. Never been a fan of LMH having watched him only once . On the other hand DOTS and Goblin were not my cup of tea.Thus I went with very low expectations and the mixed reviews didn’t help either.However, the story so far is exciting me as I feel a lot more is in store for us.I mean who doesn’t like fantasy blended with some age old myth. As it is only 2 episodes old I don’t expect the writer to spill the beans so early . She maybe wants us to scratch our heads with as much theories as we can. And I think it will be a good excercise for my brain which has been corroded after months of inactivity!!
As everyone else said, the acting did fell a little bit flat but for me KGE is better here than in Goblin .And the chemistry did feel forced and they looked disconnected. This could also be the side-effect of watching CLOY 😁. Seriously that was something of another level. The moment I saw their first scene together,it got me electrified .Their eyes did all the talking.
Apart from The King ,I m watching a weekender “Once Again” . It is a light, fluffy watch and easily makes up for all the brain exercise that I have to do for The King.
I just hope this drama makes me interested enough to not drop it or ff through the scenes. It shouldn’t go downhill in the latter part which I felt did happen in some of the KES’s dramas that I watched.
More additions to the timeline, and one correction.
In ep. 3 Jo Young is in Lee Gon’s library/study. He remembers a conversation they had, possibly on the same day Lee Gon went through the portal, because in JY’s memory LG is wearing the velour jacket with diamond buttons. They had talked about the autopsy report Prince Buyeong did for the parallel Evil Prince.
On the autopsy report, the first field of the right-hand column is headed 사망일시 (Date and Time of Death). The entry in the field is 1995-6-27 21:00. Another field halfway down in the right-hand column is headed 사고발생일시 (Date and Time of Accident). The entry in this field is also 1995-6-27 21:00. In the left-hand column, halfway down, a field is headed 부검일시 (Date and Time of Autopsy). The entry in this field is 1995-6-28. The date at the bottom of the form by the red seal is 1995-6-28. This may be when the autopsy report was filed. Things to remember: It was night when the body was seen by the fisherman, so 21:00/9:00pm could be when it was found. It was night when Head Court Lady met with Prince Buyeong about the autopsy, so he likely completed it after midnight following the body’s discovery.
These dates on the KOC autopsy report don’t line up with the date Lee Lim arrived in ROK and killed his own parallel. The daily newspaper Lee Lim is looking at when the ROK king parallel bumped and confronted him is dated 1994-12-8. I double checked, but just in case I didn’t correctly decipher it, I researched some of the headlines of the other newspapers translated for us into English subtitles. PRESIDENT KIM YOUNG SAM APPOINTS LEE HONG GU AS THE NEW PRIME MINISTER (Lee Hong Koo served as ROK Prime Minister 17 Dec 1994 to 18 Dec 1995.) TWO MONTHS AFTER THE COLLAPSE OF SEONGSU BRIDGE (the Seongsu Bridge failure happened on 21 October 1994.) And when I looked carefully at that newspaper, I saw mixed in with the hangul to the above left of the headline is the date 1994-12-8 (seen just under the red and white bungee cord). So there are two newspapers specifically confirming Lee Lim’s arrival date in ROK as 08 Dec 1994.
I went back to check the date of the newspaper seen at the salt farm which ran the headline “Former King’s Bastard Lee Lim Meets Tragic End.” Some digits aren’t clear, and I thought it was 1995-5-25, but it could be 1995-6-28. If the latter date is correct (and I now think it is), then the news of Lee Lim’s death was made public in KOC on the day the autopsy was performed and the record filed.
There’s one more important instance of dates agreeing: on the ROK form we see during Lee Lim’s police interrogation at the beginning of ep. 1 (conducted by Tae Eul and Shin Jae sometime in 2020 [Lee Lim, born 1951, is a miraculously young-looking age 69]), at the bottom there’s a field with the date entered 1995-6-27 and the notation 사망 (death). This agrees with the date of death on the autopsy report Prince Buyeong prepared in KOC.
Back to JY’s memory as he stands in Lee Gon’s library/study: Even though JY points out the DNA and fingerprints match Lee Lim’s, Lee Gon suspects “The body is like Lee Lim, but it’s like an unknown symbol that’s not really him…I have a theory that this body is a symbol that Lee Lim used to show that he died.” When JY’s memory of the conversation ends, the camera pulls back. JY is standing in front of LG’s desk, and as the camera continues to pull back, the date on the digital desk clock briefly comes into focus: 2019-10-10.
The last time we’d seen the date on this clock was when LG was looking at TE’s police ID. The date then was 2019-09-10, one month earlier.
Well spotted, @Welmaris.