When Baek Sehee died in October 2025 at age 35, the reading public immediately began speculating about what happened. There were no public announcements about an illness, no accident listed posthumously. Her family declined to comment, announcing only that her organs would be donated. Sehee’s books, I Want to Die but I Want to Eat Tteokbokki, and its follow-up I Want to Die, but I Still Want to Eat Tteokbokki, are what’s left.
They’re both excerpts from Baek Sehee’s actual conversations with her psychiatrist. In the first of the two books, the author explains her desire to record conversations, both for the sake of writing and also to replay and examine her own behavior.
Before TikTok was little more than a government-sponsored surveillance tool, BookTok was thriving and months prior to her death, I came across Sehee’s original memoir there. Numerous content creators recommended it as a candid depiction of mental health issues. I screenshot the cover art several different times, adding it to my TBR. Then Sehee’s death was announced, reported as self-inflicted before any facts came out. Suddenly, my desire to read her memoir was never higher – and I was disgusted with my own reaction
While there was always interest in Sehee’s work, I didn’t follow through and read her two books until after her death. Originally self-published in 2018, the memoir became such a success, a Korean literary imprint acquired it and translated into 15 languages. I Want to Die but I Want to Eat Tteokbokki made its English debut in 2022, translated by Anton Hur.
While the sequel introduces the idea of a bipolar diagnosis, the first book focuses on the author’s dysthymia, or persistent mild depression. I finished the first of the two books this winter, only a few months after Sehee’s death, unaware until the end that there was a sequel. Once I’d finished the orginal, and seemingly rewarded my morbid curiosity, I faced a dilemma: do I read the sequel with the assumption the author has committed suicide, or walk away only knowing a portion of the story? Now that I was familiar with author and her struggle, my initial disgust with my curiosity only grew. I questioned what I expected to gain from a follow-up.
As someone who has severely struggled with my mental health and subsequent bipolar diagnosis, I realized I was seeking a kinship from Sehee. I needed permission to believe I was sick, and not dramatic. That my low days were really low and not an exaggeration. Seeing myself in her story both scared and comforted me – I was operating on the assumption she’d killed herself (because I didn’t know that the cause of her death was never verified). I’d recognized so much of myself in the author’s first book that it helped me recognize the depth of my own despair. With that revelation, proceeding to the second book felt dangerous, yet I did it.
Something about being a voyeur into someone else’s mental health struggle feels unsavory, but simultaneously compulsory. It’s probably the same urge that draws people to true crime stories. Maybe understanding the worst gives a false sense of being able to avoid or control it.
Not fully comprehending the ending of Baek Sehee’s life has proven beneficial. It both alleviates me of the responsibility for taking an interest in her story, only after she died, and resentment in attempting to compare our pain. While I originally read Sehee’s story because I wanted to macabrely see how someone makes the transition from mental anguish to physical action – whether for curiosity’s sake or more nefarious, subconsciously, mentally ill reasons – I walked away changed for the better. Recognizing my struggle in the author gave me an odd sense of normalcy that’s hard to find with mental illness. In showing the depths of her lows, Sehee showed mine weren’t unique, and for that I genuinely hope she’s somewhere in the ether enjoying tteokbokki.