Baek Se-hee, Author Of ‘I Want to Die but I Want to Eat Tteokbokki’ Dies At 35

News Desk | October 17, 2025 | Breaking News, International | Follow on Google News

Baek Se-hee, Author Of ‘I Want to Die but I Want to Eat Tteokbokki’ Dies At 35

Baek Se-hee, the South Korean author who gained popularity for her memoir, I Want to Die but I Want to Eat Tteokbokki, has died at the age of 35. Though details surrounding Baek’s death are unclear, the Korea Organ Donation Agency said she had saved five lives through organ donation. The agency reported that Baek donated her heart, lungs, liver and kidneys.

Her 2018 book, which became a cultural phenomenon across the world, dealt with the complex issue of depression. Originally written in Korean, the book is a compilation of conversations with her psychiatrist about her depression.

Maria Corina Machado Awarded Nobel mePeace Prize 2025

Baek’s work has been translated and published in more than 25 countries, including the UK, Germany, Spain, Italy, Belgium and Poland, with over one million copies sold worldwide. Baek’s plain-spoken honesty and her effort to dismantle the stigma surrounding mental illness in Korea led to widespread critical acclaim.

“The human heart, even when it wants to die, quite often wants at the same time to eat some tteokbokki, too,” she wrote in the book.

Hungarian Author Laszlo Krasznahorkai Wins Nobel Prize For Literature 2025

A sequel, I Want to Die but I Still Want to Eat Tteokbokki, was published in Korean in 2019. Its English translation was published in 2024.

“(Baek) wanted to write, to share her heart with others through her work, and to inspire hope. Knowing her gentle nature, incapable of harbouring hatred, I hope she can now rest peacefully,” Baek’s younger sister said in a press release.

‘Feeling Of Wounded Heart’

Born in 1990, Baek studied creative writing in university before spending five years working behind the scenes in publishing. Baek often said she hoped her work could offer comfort, or at the very least, recognition.

“Even across different languages and cultures, I realised that the feeling of a ‘wounded heart’ is the same everywhere. It still amazes me that my story has touched someone else’s heart. At the same time, it’s sobering to think that so many people carry deep inner pain and that it takes great courage just to say: ‘I’m not okay,'” she told The Korea Herald. NDTV