Whats so special about the number 9 in taekwondo?
(Paraphrased from Grand Master Lee’s The Way of Traditional Taekwondo, p. 13 ff) To understand the significance of the number 9, you must first think about the number 3! In Asian culture, the number 3 (the character ) represents earth, man, and heaven; in other words, all things. In fact, if you look carefully at the Chinese characters for king (), you’ll see (in the lower-left radical) the three horizontal lines with a vertical line, which then basically means the ruler of all things. So 3 is basically an important, all-encompassing number. The number 9, then, represents 3 times 3, that is to say, “more of a good thing!” It is not by accident that the white belt form has 18 moves (1+8 = 9) or that the 1st degree black belt form has 81 moves…!
