This is for the lurkers who are confused about Eunsub’s password.

Eunsub said that Jo Yeong’s password consisted of “J and then 13 zeros. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, and zero. ‘Jo’ as in trillion, and ‘Yeong’ as in zero.”

“Jo” in Korean means a trillion. A trillion has 12 zeros after it. It looks like this:

1, 000, 000, 000, 000

Instead of typing the numeral 1, Eunsub typed the letter J for Jo. Then, he tapped zero 12 times.

But “Yeong” also means zero in Korean. Therefore Eunsub added an extra 0 after the 12 zeros he already typed in.

In sum, he typed J and 13 zeros for the password. 🙂

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As for Lee Gon’s name, his family name is written 이 and there’s also a controversy about how to translate it into English: Lee, Yi, or even Rhee.

In one of my math posts on number theory, @nrllee pointed out that Lee Gon’s name had zero and one in it.

이 – zero and one. That’s my contribution to the number theory 😂

https://bitchesoverdramas.com/2020/05/11/the-king-number-theory-for-bitches-part-1/#comment-24773

I laughed and called her the “accidental genius” because she didn’t even know what was going on. She replied:

Sometimes I surprise even myself 😂. Nah, it clicked because of @packmule3’s talk about “Maths for Liberal Arts”. YOU + ME = FOREVER. So similarly, ㅇ + ㅣ = ETERNAL ❤️. All his talk about Zero and One and it was right there for her to see, in his name. 😂. Frankly it was meant to be facetious. I have no idea if it was meant to be anything significant

https://bitchesoverdramas.com/2020/05/11/the-king-number-theory-for-bitches-part-1/#comment-24872

@soapbeans also said this:

My thoughts and contribution to the number theory: When I was watching the episodes this week, it struck me that Yeong, LG’s right-hand man, actually also means “zero” in Korean. It’s interesting that LG likes the number zero so much, he now has two of them by his side.

https://bitchesoverdramas.com/2020/05/11/the-king-number-theory-for-bitches-part-1/#comment-24862

Yesterday, JT7 has this to add:

@Dreamer @carolstar: Yes I agree KES took pains to link many elements together and the mathematical symbolism in the show is simply beautiful. Sorry, let me ramble bit more about math, because I just thought of a few more things that made me so excited:

@nrllee mentioned that she spotted the significance of the Korean 2 (이) being made of the number 0 and 1 earlier on in the show, and that 이 is part of LG’s name. Initially I saw 이 as LG’s solution to his root symbol problem: TE (as 0), and himself ( as the 1), both kill LL, and both of them TWOgether (sorry couldn’t help it) solve LG’s problem of loneliness. Adding a 2 as a superscript to any number in a root symbol squares it, releasing it from being trapped. The show even gives a nod to this concept in the timestops: the duration of each timestop is a square of prime number, deja vu events occur at time stops 1, 4, 9, 16 (squares of 1, 2, 3, 4), there are in total 36 time stops (square of 6) (please refer to my time stops table to see the patterns).

But I just realized the symbolism of 이 doesn’t stop there! LG has another ZERO by his side: Yeong. We are given hints of this when ES cracks Yeong’s password: Jo = 1 trillion, Yeong = 0. The scene where LG and JY storm Cheonjongo during the second return to the night of treason, is a perfect example of 이: JY on the left, as the 0, LG on the right, as the 1. LG, because he retains his memories, will have 2 sets of memories, and will remember 2 saviours: himself (1), as the black shooter in the first return, and JY (0), in the second return.

Finally, even LL’s death has elements of 이 to it. TE shoots the 2020 LL first = 0. She uses a gun, which leaves ROUND bullet holes (the show even shows us those holes during the scene when SJ and TE go for their range shooting test). LG then kills the 1994 LL = 1. He uses his 4 tiger sword, which slices in a straight line (and we’ve seen those lines so many times: when 1994 LG slices LL’s hand, when 1994 LL slices 2020 LL’s neck).

To me, the  math in this kdrama has been enriching experience. If nothing else, it showed us that math class can be fun and intriguing if we have an inspiration to solve problems and find answers.

By the way, check out this math professor explaining Fermat’s Last Theorem.  Wouldn’t you want to ace his class?