Seoul, 17 Oct

Baek Se-Hee, South Korean author of the bestselling self-help memoir ‘I Want to Die But I Want to Eat Tteokbokki’ has died at the age of 35.

Born in 1990, Baek studied creative writing at college before she began working for a publishing house for five years.

Though it is not clear how she died, according to media reports, she saved the lives of five people by donating her heart, lungs, liver and both kidneys.

Celebrated for normalising conversations around mental health, ‘I Want to Die but I Want to Eat Tteokbokki,’ published in 2018, has sold more than a million copies worldwide and translated in several other languages.

It was translated to English and published in the UK by Bloomsbury. Baek suffered with dysthymia for more than a decade, a condition marked by persistent depression. She was under psychiatric treatment for 10 years.

The book is a compilation of conversations with her psychiatrist about her depression, and the book is considered a cultural phenomenon with the subjects it addresses resonating with readers across the world.

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.