I Want to Die but I Want to Eat Tteokbokki by Baek Sehee is an internationally bestselling South Korean memoir and psychological lifeline that offers an incredibly raw, intimate look at living with persistent, mild depression (dysthymia).

Structured primarily through a series of verbatim dialogue transcripts between the author and her psychiatrist, the narrative documents Sehee’s high-stakes quest to understand the invisible, suffocating emotional duality that dictates her daily life. On the surface, she is a successful youth fiction editor who appears perfectly fine to the outside world; underneath, she is trapped in a exhausting cycle of self-doubt, anxiety, and deep-seated insecurities that quietly dismantle her emotional defenses.