Discovering the People Behind the Screen
I grew up loving games and animation. Korean animation channels such as Tooniverse and AniOne were always on, and I was especially drawn to games with strong stories. TalesWeaver is the first one that comes to mind; following its chapters made me feel the pull of an entire world. I loved Kaleido Star for characters who changed through hardship, and Fullmetal Alchemist for Edward Elric. More recently, I have been happily reading Yomi no Tsugai by the same creator.
The moment voice acting became a real profession to me was when I found footage online of actors recording Spirited Away. Until then, I had never seen the people working behind the screen. Around that time, the senior students in my middle-school broadcasting club hosted a lunchtime music program like a radio show. I already admired voice actors, so I auditioned for the club and spent all three years of middle school as an announcer.
Soon I wanted to record characters, not only school announcements. I spent my allowance on a 20,000-won condenser microphone and taught myself how to connect it, record, and edit. I also joined an online voice-acting community, where people with the same dream made projects together and exchanged feedback. The work was unpaid, but being heard—and hearing myself improve—was exciting. A year’s difference between recordings was enough to reveal how the texture of my voice had changed.
Voice-acting academies for teenagers and online lessons were not common then. I learned largely by listening to animation and imitating what I heard. Repeated recording slowly turned an interest into a decision: I wanted to become a voice actor. When I told my mother that I hoped to major in acting, she supported the dream but advised me to build another path as well. I chose a broadcasting-related degree, something that could keep me close to the work while leaving room for a plan B.
Lunch-Break Lessons and Seven Years of Auditions
After university, I became an assistant director in a television station’s news department. I had initially attended an academy with my parents’ help, but I did not want to depend on them indefinitely. With my supervisor’s permission, I would finish lunch in five minutes, take a bus to Fun School’s Seocho branch, and study one-on-one with senior voice actor Kim Gwang-guk. When a passionate lesson ran long, I would have to say, reluctantly, “I have to go—I’ll cause trouble if I’m late.”
Broadcasting days began early and ended late, and I did not have the stamina to continue academy classes on weekends. Still, the newsroom gave me something valuable. As a floor director, I listened to live news twice a day and absorbed the length and rhythm of Korean vowels and precise pronunciation. I had taken the job to pay for training, so after saving enough money I left and devoted myself almost entirely to voice acting.
I applied to every open-recruitment audition I could. My first was for Daewon Broadcasting’s fifth intake, and I failed. Soon afterward I passed the first round at KBS, one of Korea’s national broadcasters. I had gone in assuming I could not possibly succeed, so I simply enjoyed performing as I did in class; that ease may have helped. At the final stage, however, the paper shook in my hands and I went down spectacularly.
I then passed Tooniverse’s first round as well and briefly imagined the rest might come quickly. Instead, one year became two, then three, and there were long stretches when I could not clear even the opening stage. The easy optimism that said “someday it will happen” gradually turned into anxiety.
Seven calendar years passed between my first eligible audition and the year I succeeded. I took almost every exam that appeared, yet seldom advanced beyond the first stage. Reaching the final round for Daewon’s tenth intake and then being rejected felt nothing like an early loss. The cruel part was realizing that the entire year-long process had to begin again.
I tried to move toward the next action rather than remain inside the disappointment. I also auditioned for Daekyo, and by the time Daewon’s eleventh intake opened, I had decided that another rejection would send me back to regular employment. That was the audition I passed. I cried from happiness. I could finally live by the work I had dreamed of since childhood; at the same time, I knew I had to stay alert and work hard enough to survive within it.
Learning to Hear the Meaning Before the Voice
As a student, people often said I seemed better suited to the voice-actor troupes of Korean broadcasters KBS or EBS. My narration had received praise. I thought of KBS as a home for radio drama and EBS as a place where actors could work across documentaries and animation. By contrast, the troupes connected to animation-channel operators such as Daewon Broadcasting and Tooniverse appeared to favor bold, sharply characterized voices. I considered my natural timbre ordinary, so almost no one predicted Daewon for me.
I became preoccupied with vocal transformation. Voice actors tend to envy what another person has, and I believed an invented, distinctive sound was necessary to complete a character. My teachers kept telling me to stop fixating on transformation and listen to the meaning of the words. Yet when I reviewed a recording, my first question was still whether the voice sounded right for the character, not whether the emotion or intention had landed.
One day I set that anxiety aside and concentrated only on acting. The meaning of the lines became clearer, and the expression came more naturally. Learning to alter my voice was not wasted effort; today it is one tool among many. But the first questions must be why this person is speaking, to whom, and with what feeling. The sound comes after that.
Chloe’s Question Mark and Mast’s Unfamiliar Cadence
When I first saw Chloe from Trickcal: Chibi Go, I thought her round cheeks were impossibly cute. Her high, firm placement is not an easy register for me, so my earlier experiments with vocal transformation helped. The game classifies her as “Madness,” which initially made me imagine someone eerie. In practice, she can hear the doll Sebastian when no one else can, delivers unusually sensible observations, and often seems more mature than the people around her. I keep the contrast between her prickly manner with others and the affection she shows Sebastian, almost like a younger sibling.
Her famous drawn-out interjection was written into the script from the beginning. I found a placement that could emerge naturally from her high, firm voice without becoming harsh to the ear, then varied it according to surprise, suspicion, or disbelief. I never want the same verbal tic to become a mechanically repeated sound.
I still regret missing the sold-out mug fans call the “healthy-teeth cup,” with Chloe’s eyes and brilliant grin wrapping around its side. I did not feel entitled to ask for merchandise on top of being paid for the recording, but I would still love to find one someday.
I am also grateful to EPID Games for its character-focused Theater stories, which make players feel closer to both the cast and the characters. Trickcal is usually cute and absurdly funny, but Aya’s Theater story, “Upon Your Frozen Name,” brings the Eldain characters together to confront old conflicts. When Chloe finally releases her pent-up grief, I stopped thinking about holding the difficult pitch. Her words simply came out. That experience made her especially precious to me.
Mast from GODDESS OF VICTORY: NIKKE may be the character I have the most fun recording. Her playful smile and twin tails made me prepare a cute, energetic girl, but the unusual sentence endings in her script hinted at something else. In the studio, the team asked me to lower the voice and give her the earthy cadence of an older harbor sailor—fitting for a naval officer who dreams of piracy.
At first I worried that players would reject such an unexpected combination. Finding the center was difficult: one step too far could make a young girl sound elderly. The team and I adjusted the performance together with great care. Initial reactions showed some surprise, but over time players came to love exactly what made her singular. Looking back, I think the character planners had remarkable foresight.
Mast was a direct casting rather than an audition: the team heard my sample and shaped the performance with me in the studio. Skins and event stories continue to bring her back, sometimes once a year. She taught me the pleasure of returning to the same person and extending her life beyond a single recording session.
When My Voice Entered the Worlds I Had Played
I began Genshin Impact on its second day of release. Study and my in-house years at Daewon interrupted my progress, but I promised myself that I would join a HoYoverse title after becoming a freelancer. When the Clorinde audition arrived, receiving the chance alone felt precious. I recorded three versions and kept refining them until the deadline. After I was cast, I raced from Inazuma through Sumeru so that I would be ready for Fontaine.
Clorinde is disciplined and formal as Fontaine’s Champion Duelist, but she relaxes around Navia and has an unexpected love of games. Her first appearance remains vivid: she seems to be leading a formation of machines toward Navia and the Traveler’s group, almost like a villain, then cuts the machines down. The director and I built even the smallest breaths in that scene with great care.
Clorinde appeared early in Fontaine’s story, but a long wait followed before she became playable. As a player waiting for her banner, I initially planned to obtain one copy and her signature weapon. Then I heard constellation two was good, and later that constellation six was even better. I kept pulling until I finally stopped at five, with the missing last copy lingering in my mind.
When her rerun arrived, senior voice actor Kim Garyeong, the Korean voice of Paimon, suggested we make the final pull into a livestream. Clorinde appeared almost immediately, erasing the runtime we had planned. I was delighted and anxious about the vanished content at the same time. Even if the current meta has moved away from her, I am waiting for the day players bring her back into regular use.
I met Nicole Demara of Zenless Zone Zero through a broad pre-release audition that allowed actors to try for several characters. She appeared near the top of the list and looked like a central figure, so I tried not to expect too much. I also prepared for boyish or heroic roles that seemed more attainable. When I was told I had won Nicole, the joy felt almost as intense as passing the public recruitment exam. Perhaps I had wanted her more than I had admitted to myself.
I love unruly, high-energy comedy: shouting, snapping back, and pushing the pace. Nicole cares about nothing but money and acts stingy with the Cunning Hares, and I raise the energy each time while asking how to make those scenes even funnier. But when her companions were in danger and she decided she had to protect them, I removed her usual exaggeration and played the moment seriously. I argued that the contrast would tell players how grave the situation was. Fans later embraced the scene in a short-form clip, and it remains one of my favorites.
An early promotional video briefly showed Nicole in an orphanage. What happened afterward—how she lived alone and eventually formed the Cunning Hares—has not yet been fully told. I am as curious as the players about the years before the group built its reputation on the Inter-Knot.
While I was playing Genshin Impact and recording Clorinde, I already knew Wuthering Waves was another major title on the horizon. Like any voice actor, I wanted the chance to enter a prominent game world. When the offer came as a direct casting rather than an audition, that trust created additional pressure. At the same time, I was deeply grateful to voice someone as beautiful as Changli and to receive such warm feedback after her release.
The advance character sheet had not struck me as strongly as the finished model. Seeing Changli in-game taught me that a character could look even more beautiful in motion than in an illustration. She was also one of my first truly alluring roles. I followed her foxlike eyes toward a seductive quality, but the director reminded me not to lose the intelligence of a strategist. The performance found its balance between those two directions.
Changli is brilliant and serves as Jinhsi’s mentor. With Jinhsi, she speaks like a teacher; with the Rover, her words and manner soften as she recognizes the person who can help resolve the crisis on Mt. Firmament. I built small differences around those relationships.
I will not forget the affection fans showed when I streamed with MYUNG-DDUG. Yet Changli has not returned to the main story since the early Mt. Firmament chapter, so I have never had a second recording session with her. Even after many beautiful new characters arrived, she remained high in popularity polls. I hope Kuro Games sees how many people are still waiting and brings her back. I am waiting alongside her fans.
Meeting Rumi in My Undisguised Voice
Rumi from KPop Demon Hunters came to me by chance. I had no previous connection with the film’s dubbing director; this project was our first meeting. After finishing an unrelated session at the same studio, I made a very brief phone call in the lobby. The director, who had been searching for Rumi’s voice, happened to hear my ordinary speaking voice from inside. The timing felt almost like fate. The director later said in another interview that the voice seemed to have dropped out of the sky.
I did not even know the title when I auditioned. From the script, I could only infer the unusual combination of a K-pop idol and a warrior who hunts demons. I wondered how something so new would work across a full film. At the screening, my first thoughts were that it was far more entertaining than I had expected and that the music was wonderful.
As the film became a worldwide phenomenon, senior colleagues congratulated me and spoke generously about the performance. I had assumed that a leading role in something this popular might come once in an entire career; having it arrive so early can still frighten me. People tell me I earned it through ability, but I continue to think of Rumi as extraordinary good fortune.
After the release, several parents I knew asked whether I could record a short personal message in Rumi’s voice for their children. When I sent one, the parents filmed the children’s delighted reactions and sent those videos back to me. I had grown up loving the voices of actors behind the characters on my own screen. Now I was seeing children react to my voice in the same way, and that made the experience both moving and deeply gratifying.
Rumi also changed—and helped establish—how I think about acting. I had been preoccupied with vocal transformation since my student years, and traces of that habit remained even after I became a professional. Yet Rumi began with the director overhearing my ordinary voice. From audition through recording, I was repeatedly asked not to manufacture a sound.
I had rarely performed in my unadorned speaking voice. It felt like appearing bare-faced when I believed an important role required elaborate makeup, and at first I asked whether it was really acceptable. Instead, I focused on how a Korean woman in her twenties might actually speak today. Once I let the voice stay comfortable and concentrated on emotion, the words began to move with much greater freedom.
I did not record in the room with Zoey’s Korean voice actor Kim Yelim or Mira’s Korean voice actor Kim Doyoung; film dubbing often requires actors to work separately for technical reasons. Yet in the completed film, the conversations among the three members of HUNTR/X fit together naturally. Each of us had imagined the others from our separate booths and done our part.
Our Korean cover of “Golden” began at a colleague’s wedding, where the three of us met for almost the first time since the film’s release. While celebrating the film’s success, Kim Yelim and Kim Doyoung proposed a cover. Singing had never been my strength, and because the film had used the original songs without a Korean adaptation, I knew a Korean-language version might attract considerable attention. That made the idea even more intimidating.
Kim Doyoung changed my mind by saying we should stop worrying about how others would judge us and simply have fun together. Opportunities like this do not come often, and I would have two dependable senior colleagues beside me. I agreed, then took a week of intensive vocal lessons because I still could not arrive unprepared.
Kim Yelim edited the video, Kim Doyoung adapted the lyrics into Korean, and creator Lee Shinhyuk—someone I had worked with before—readily helped with recording and mixing. Kim Doyoung sent the adapted lyrics that very evening, which made me want to work harder. So many people contributed that I sometimes feel all I did was practice the song. The audience may have responded so warmly because the pleasure of making it together remained in the result.
A Voice That Belongs Inside the Work
The moment that changed me most was failing the final round for Daewon’s tenth intake. Reaching the last gate had raised my hopes, so it became my deepest disappointment. Yet it also clarified how certain I was that I wanted to continue. The moments when I refused to give up accumulated into part of my effort, and effort met the right timing and good fortune.
That combination eventually brought me characters loved by many players: Changli, Rumi, and Yuuka in Blue Archive, among others. Through them, I began to feel that the years I had worked so hard were not simply wasted. Failure did not disappear, but perhaps I could accept these opportunities because I had become the person who endured it.
If I had to name one strength in Shin Nari the person, it would be diligence. I dislike compromising, and I especially dislike misreading a script. Even when a studio allows another take, I prefer to carry the flow through cleanly, so I look at every character on the page one more time. That habit is part of what keeps me working like a voice actor.
Ten years from now, I hope I can look back and say, “I really knew nothing then,” because I will have grown that much—enough to smile at what I could not yet do.
For fans, I want to be a comforting voice actor, someone who settles naturally into a work instead of protruding from it. Perhaps my name will not leap out at first. But later, I hope someone realizes, “She was here, and there too—and every time, she was good to listen to.”
I began as someone who loved consuming games and animation, and now I work on the creative side of those experiences. That is why I keep thinking about how the audience will feel. For everyone who loves Korean dubbing, and everyone who holds one of my characters close, I will keep loving those characters with you and perform them with the responsibility their next stories deserve.