Baek Se-hee, author of bestselling memoir ‘I Want To Die But I Want To Eat Tteokbokki,’ dead at 35

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South Korean author Baek Se-hee, who wrote the bestselling memoir “I Want to Die but I Want to Eat Tteokbokki,” has died at age 35, the Korean Organ Donation Agency announced on Thursday.

The agency’s statement did not give the cause of Baek’s death.

Her book blended memoir and self-help, detailing her conversations with her psychiatrist as she grappled with conflicting feelings of wanting to die but also enjoying small pleasures like tteokbokki, a popular South Korean street food that was her favourite dish.

With its frank and thoughtful discussions about therapy and mental health, the book became immensely popular in South Korea when it was published in 2018. Once it was translated into English in 2022, it became popular overseas, too, reaching the Sunday Times Bestsellers List in the United Kingdom and receiving a recommendation in the New York Times.

“Even when I changed all the parts of my life that I had wanted to change — my weight, education, partner and friends — I was still depressed,” she wrote. “I didn’t always feel that way, but I would go in and out of a funk that was as inevitable as bad weather.”

She wrote another memoir in 2019, titled “I Want to Die but I Still Want to Eat Tteokbokki,” about her continuing struggles of living with dysthymia, a constant low-level depression.

Born in 1990, the second of three daughters, Baek studied creative writing at university. It was while she was working as a social media director at a publishing house that she underwent treatment for depression and wrote her memoir.

Baek’s younger sister, Baek Da-hee, paid tribute to her sibling in a statement released via the organ donation agency, remembering her as someone who “wrote, shared her heart with others through her writing, and hoped to nurture dreams of hope.”

“I know her kind heart, one that loved so much and hated no one, so I hope she now rests in peace in heaven. I love you so much,” her sister added.

Baek donated her heart, lungs, liver and both kidneys when she died, saving the lives of five people, the organ donation agency said.

Anton Hur, Baek’s English translator and fellow author, paid tribute to her in an Instagram post, saying that “her readers will know she touched yet millions of lives more with her writing. My thoughts are with her family.”

By Issy Ronald, CNN