Baek Se Hee: Author of ‘I Want to Die but I Want to Eat Tteokbokki’, dies aged 35
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Baek Se Hee: Author of ‘I Want to Die but I Want to Eat Tteokbokki’, dies aged 35
By Shahana Yasmin,
3 hours ago
Baek Se-hee, the South Korean author whose candid memoirI Want to Die but I Want to Eat Tteokbokki helped bring conversations about depression and therapy into the mainstream, has died at the age of 35.
Her death was confirmed by the Korea Organ and Tissue Donation Agency on Friday, which said in a statement that she had donated her heart, lungs, liver, and both kidneys at the National Health Insurance Service Ilsan Hospital in Gyeonggi Province, north of capital Seoul, saving five lives.
The cause and exact date of death have not been made public.
“We are deeply grateful for the warm-hearted love shown by donor Baek Se-hee and her family in practicing the gift of life,” Lee Sam Yeol, director of the Korea Organ and Tissue Donation Agency, said in the statement. “The love Baek shared at the end of her life – after offering comfort and hope through her heartfelt writing – has become a miracle that gives life to others.”
It was during this time that she was diagnosed with dysthymia, a mild but persistent form of depression, and began seeking therapy, the content of which would form the basis of her 2018 debut memoir. According to her short biography on Bloomsbury Publishing, which released the English edition, Baek received treatment for dysthymia for nearly a decade.
Baek rose to prominence in 2018 with her debut memoir I Want to Die but I Want to Eat Tteokbokki, a plainspoken yet tender chronicle of her therapy sessions over a 12-week period.
The book was first self-published before being acquired by the literary imprint Munhakdongne, becoming a sensation in South Korea and later a global phenomenon after its 2022 English translation by Anton Hur for Bloomsbury. It has since sold more than 2 million copies and been translated into over 25 languages.
In choosing her title, Baek aimed to capture the experience of a life caught between despair and the persistence of everyday life. “I was thinking of planning my own death, but I got hungry and ate tteokbokki,” she told The Straits Times in 2024, capturing the paradox of wanting to die yet still craving something as ordinary as a street food snack.
I Want to Die but I Want to Eat Tteokbokki went on to become a viral sensation across Asia and drew international attention, with many describing it as a rare and accessible look at therapy and self-acceptance.
In a 2020 interview with K-Book Trends, Baek said she wrote the memoir to make her pain visible to others. “I hoped that people who feel the same would find relief in knowing they’re not alone, and that people unlike me would at least realise that such people exist,” she said.
The book’s transcript-like style, half of it in therapy dialogue and the other half internal reflection, offered readers a quiet, looping rhythm, at times almost unbearably intimate. “I hope you will listen to a certain overlooked and different voice within you. Because the human heart, even when it wants to die, quite often wants at the same time to eat some tteokbokki, too,” a line from her book reads.
Baek was often described as part of a generation of South Korean and primarily women authors who used confessional writing to explore anxiety, exhaustion and self-doubt in a society obsessed with perfection. She avoided sensationalising suffering, and instead traced its persistence and the feeling of being “functional but hollow”, as one line in her book reads.
In a 2023 conversation with PEN Transmissions, she recalled how the idea first took shape on her blog, where she began publishing fragments from her psychiatric consultations. “Someone left a comment saying that reading my words made them realise their own symptoms,” she said. “That was the first time I understood that writing about myself could help others.”
A sequel, I Want to Die but I Still Want to Eat Tteokbokki, was published in Korean in 2019 and translated into English in 2024, continuing the exploration of what she called “a life that goes on, even when the pain doesn’t vanish”.
When she visited Singapore for the Writers Festival in 2024, she said she was struck by how audiences abroad connected to the same emotions. “We’re quite similar,” she said. “Everyone feels anxious. Everyone is trying to be okay.”
Translator Anton Hur paid tribute on social media, writing, “Her readers will know she touched yet millions of lives more with her writing.”
“Her words meant so much to me, she wrote with such honesty, like she was sitting beside you, quietly saying, ‘I get it,’” wrote a fan on X, formerly Twitter.
“To the author who made me feel seen through her words, Baek Se Hee you were an absolute angel. I come back to this book slowly because you’ve caught those feelings right to the core and made me feel I belong. We love you and I wish you rest in paradise my beautiful saviour,” wrote another.
If you are experiencing feelings of distress, or are struggling to cope, you can speak to the Samaritans, in confidence, on 116 123 (UK and ROI), email j...@samaritans.org, or visit the Samaritans website to find details of your nearest branch.
If you are based in the USA, and you or someone you know needs mental health assistance right now, call the National Suicide Prevention Helpline on 1-800-273-TALK (8255). This is a free, confidential crisis hotline that is available to everyone 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
If you are in another country, you can go to www.befrienders.org to find a helpline near you.