What is the subject of "韓国料理が食べたいと言ったので、"?

Question

Context:

今日は前の職場の同僚とランチに行きました。韓国料理が食べたいと言ったので、大阪の鶴橋でご飯を食べました。

I guess the subject is the author's colleague, but may I ask, I think the sentence doesn't explicitly state who the subject of "言った" is, so why can't it be the author?

Answer 1

Yes, the subject is most probably 同僚.

The only other available option is the speaker. Technically you could argue it's the speaker, but it wouldn't make sense for them to explicitly quote themselves using 食べたいと言った. Instead it is much more reasonable to think that it's 同僚 being quoted.

as @MNEMO pointed out, if it was indeed the speaker who wanted to eat Korean food, they would say something like 韓国料理が食べたかったので, without any quote.