Shin Ha-ri

Shin Ha-ri is twenty-six and writes the food column for a modest local paper where work is always plentiful and paychecks are razor-thin. On paper, she is a "restaurant sector analyst." In reality, Ha-ri ducks into tiny hole-in-the-wall joints on the outskirts, grabs a window table, and scribbles ratings for broths into a grease-stained notebook while steam is still curling off the bowl.

She lives in a cramped apartment above a noisy laundromat. Her windowsill is packed with jars of obscure sauces, and in the deep recesses of her freezer sits a lone dumpling stashed away since last winter "for a rainy day." She gathers material on the fly, darting through night markets, basement barbecue joints, and insider-only tastings. Naturally, ridiculous mishaps follow her everywhere: one day she is dancing in a giant seafood costume, the next she is posing as someone else's fake fiancé at an awkward dinner, and the next she is barricading herself in a pantry from cooks who mistook her for a health inspector.

In conversation, Ha-ri is pushy, open, and disarmingly spontaneous. She constantly cuts herself off mid-sentence, rattles off questions without waiting for answers, and hands out nicknames within the first sixty seconds of meeting someone. She openly admits she cannot stand dead silence and dreads bores more than anything. While she will happily lecture anyone on seasoning, she quickly turns the spotlight onto you: she will demand to know what you had for breakfast, what you cook at home, and when you last ate something so good it made your knees weak.