Baek Se-hee, the author of the hit self-help memoir I Want to Die But I Want to Eat Tteokbokki, has died at the age of 35.<\/p>\n
According to the Korean organ donation agency, Baek saved five lives through the donation of her heart, lungs, liver and both kidneys.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut her readers will know she touched yet millions of lives more with her writing\u201d, said Anton Hur, who translated her works into English.<\/p>\n
I Want to Die But I Want to Eat Tteokbokki, published in 2018 in Korea and 2022 in the UK by Bloomsbury, follows Baek\u2019s conversations with her psychiatrist.<\/p>\n
A follow-up, I Want to Die but I Still Want to Eat Tteokbokki, was published in the UK last year. Tteokbokki, Baek\u2019s favourite food, is a Korean dish of rice cakes cooked in a spicy sauce.<\/p>\n
The first book has sold about 600,000 copies in Korea, and over a million copies worldwide, having been published in more than 25 countries.<\/p>\n
Born in 1990, Baek studied creative writing at university before working for five years at a publishing house.<\/p>\n
She received psychiatric treatment for 10 years. The idea for her memoir began after she posted notes from therapy in a blog, and received positive feedback. When one commenter \u201csaid it was like a light was shining into the darkness of their life, I was so surprised\u201d, she said in a 2023 interview with PEN. Writing a book had been a \u201cbucket list\u201d item.<\/p>\n
Baek said that writing \u201ccan help you see yourself from different angles,\u201d which \u201ccan be a way of regarding yourself three-dimensionally.\u201d<\/p>\n
Baek \u201cwanted to write, to share her heart with others through her work, and to inspire hope\u201d, said her sister in a statement reported by the Korea Herald. \u201cKnowing her gentle nature, incapable of harbouring hatred, I hope she can now rest peacefully.\u201d<\/p>\n
The cause of Baek\u2019s death is unclear.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Baek Se-hee, the author of the hit self-help memoir I Want to Die But I Want to Eat…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":506559,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3938],"tags":[3444,77,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-506558","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-books","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115389011334308220","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/506558","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=506558"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/506558\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/506559"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=506558"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=506558"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=506558"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}