Between Death and Tteokbokki: The life and legacy of Baek Se-hee

Some writers try to change the world by shouting. Baek Se-hee did it by whispering. Her memoir I Want to Die but I Want to Eat Tteokbokki was neither a manifesto nor a diagnosis. It wasn’t even a conventional story. It was a record of small, tender, painfully honest conversations with her psychiatrist — and yet it rippled across the world in ways louder books never could.

A Radical Memoir in Its Simplicity

Published in South Korea in 2018, Baek’s book broke every rule of the genre. There were no dramatic arcs or neat resolutions — just transcripts of therapy sessions tracing the contours of a mind wrestling with itself.

Critics called this radical in its fragility. She stripped language of performance and pretense, letting raw vulnerability stand exposed. And in a society where mental illness is often cloaked in shame and silence, Baek’s decision to map her depression so openly — without euphemism — was a cultural rupture.

Even those who found the transcript-like style uneven admitted that it captured something rarely articulated: the daily texture of sadness, confusion, and slow healing.

Speaking for a Generation

What began as deeply personal therapy notes became a cultural phenomenon. Baek initially shared fragments of her conversations online, expecting them to vanish into the digital void. Instead, they struck a nerve. Thousands wrote to say her words made them feel seen — that she had articulated emotions they were too afraid to voice.

Her timing was significant. In 2018, when conversations about mental health in East Asia were still cloaked in stigma, Baek’s openness felt revolutionary. Here was someone not only acknowledging therapy but sharing her sessions with the world. The book became a mirror, reflecting a quiet epidemic of despair — and giving it language.

From Book to Movement

The rise of Tteokbokki was as unlikely as it was unstoppable. It was crowdfunded before being picked up by a publisher, spread by word-of-mouth before being championed by critics.

When the English translation appeared in 2022, it broke cultural and linguistic barriers. Over a million copies sold. More than 25 translations followed. Its most famous line — “The human heart, even when it wants to die, quite often wants at the same time to eat some tteokbokki, too” — became a cultural touchstone.

It showed up in tattoos and essays, in therapist offices and social media bios. Celebrities quoted it. Book clubs dissected it. And people everywhere began using Baek’s paradox — the simultaneous longing for oblivion and comfort — to talk about their own contradictions.

Redefining Healing and Resilience

The book’s power lay in what it refused to do: solve anything. It offered no 10-step guide to happiness, no triumphant victory over depression. Instead, it gave people permission to inhabit the messy middle — to want death and lunch, to cry and laugh, to hate themselves and still check the weather for tomorrow.

This, critics argued, was its deepest contribution. Baek normalised contradiction. By refusing to package suffering neatly, she made it recognisably human. And by celebrating small, stubborn pleasures — a bowl of spicy rice cakes, a conversation, a flicker of hope — she redefined resilience not as triumph but as persistence.

A Legacy That Outlived Her

Baek Se-hee died in 2025 at just 35. In her final act of generosity, she donated her organs, saving five lives. Her translator would later say she saved millions more with her words.

Her legacy endures not because she offered solutions, but because she refused to hide from despair. She taught a generation that fragility is not failure, that contradiction is part of being human, and that even in the depths of darkness, one can still crave something as simple — and as vital — as tteokbokki.

And perhaps that’s the quiet revolution she sparked: that somewhere, someone who wants to die might still reach for that bowl — and decide to keep going.