[INTERVIEW] Teenage author shares experience overcoming suicidal thoughts in novel

Social Affairs

Published: 25 Feb. 2024, 14:36

[INTERVIEW] Teenage author shares experience overcoming suicidal thoughts in novel

Baek Eun-byeol, 14, author of the recently published book ″D-day″ about middle school students in Korea struggling with suicidal thoughts, speaks with the Korea JoongAng Daily in Seoul on Tuesday. [PARK SANG-MOON]

Some Korean teenagers designate a specific date to be the last day of their lives, says author Baek Eun-byeol, who recently wrote a book about her own experience of choosing life over death.

“Although it sounds grim, it’s actually a mechanism that helped me live another day,” she told the Korea JoongAng Daily on Tuesday.

The 14-year-old author published last month a novel about three teenagers who struggle with suicidal thoughts and the deaths of friends.

While it is not the first novel in Korea about teenagers’ suicide, it is one of the first written by a teen who struggled with depression and thoughts of ending her life.

The so-called “D-day” mechanism also drives the novel and its characters.

Weaving in first-person narratives of the three characters, whose lives overlap in the setting of a middle school in Korea, Baek paints a raw picture of the emotions and thoughts of teenagers that may go undetected even by their parents and generic psychological tests at their schools.

The book “D-day,” published by Barun Books last month, is only available in Korea, though this may change with growing international attention on teenage suicide in the country.

Korea has the highest suicide rate among OECD countries, with suicide accounting for 24.1 cases per 100,000 people in the country as of 2020. The second highest in the rank was Lithuania at 18.5, and the lowest was Peru at 1.8.

Suicide has been the leading cause of death among teens in Korea since 2011.

Baek says structural issues are at the heart of these statistics, which she hoped to shed light on with her novel.

“Reasons to live can be both big and small, and everyone can have a different journey toward them,” she said.

The following are excerpts of the interview, edited for clarity and length.

Q. The book is a novel based on your own experiences of having suicidal thoughts and selecting a D-day of your life. Can you tell us more about your journey?
It began during the pandemic. I was in fifth grade in elementary school when I fell out of friendship with some close friends. I don’t do very well in keeping my own company, and that’s when I started having dark thoughts.

Is it common for your friends or classmates to set a so-called D-day in their lives?
Some of my friends have told me before that they would like to die before winter comes or before school starts again. I’ve also seen social media posts where teens set a D-day of their lives.

Teens were found to be more susceptible to suicidal thoughts than adults in a recent survey by the Health Ministry. Why do you think that is?
Part of it may have to do with the stressful studying environment. The grading system on a curve means you have to begin competing with your friends, and the cutthroat competition means you are expected to step over other people to rise in the ranks, go to private academies with star lecturers, and ultimately get into universities in Seoul. If that’s the only picture of the world around you, it can be pretty bleak.

Then there is the factor that students don’t have the same responsibility as adults. They can quickly decide that there is not much to lose by dying. Some could even be so impulsive to think that their own death could be a way of retribution against someone they are angry with.

The main character ultimately finds a reason to live within herself. Was that what happened to you?
I first opened up about my thoughts to my mother. I did it because I felt I couldn’t get over this myself. The school also found out about my depression and told my mother around the same time.

I started getting counseling over the years, and I have to say, for me, there wasn’t this sense of a clear break between the before and after. My D-day came and passed. I hadn’t imagined a future beyond the D-day, but there I was. I thought then that if I am still alive and have to continue living, there must be better ways to live. And the more I lived, the more reasons for living came.

What would you say are those reasons today?
There are reasons both big and small. Last year, I was elected the vice president of the school’s student body, and this year, I was made president. So that meant added responsibilities. Then there were friends I didn’t want to lose or harm. Then there was this book that I started writing. So, reasons just added up, and the feelings and thoughts that used to grip me faded over time.

It must have been a difficult decision to write a book about your own experiences of struggling with suicidal thoughts.
The thought of writing a book about this meant that more people around me would learn what I went through. That people might see me differently worried me. But I decided to do it because this was a story that only I could tell. I did dream of bringing good influence to this world, so this was a risk I thought was worth taking.

If unhappy teens can put on a happy facade, which can even fool parents and close friends, how do you think help can best reach them?
It is critical to create a safe place where children can tell adults what’s on their mind. Fewer and fewer teenagers hold conversations with their parents.

Keeping a journal also helped me. I would get bogged down in depression without knowing where it was coming from. But when I started writing, I could see more visibly what some of these reasons were and that sometimes helped me realize that they weren’t reasons enough to be depressed.

What would you like to tell people with suicidal thoughts today?
People affected with suicidal thoughts can exist anywhere in this world, regardless of their age. It’s a very sad reality. And this might seem like a lie — I used to think it was when someone told me this — but things do pass with time, and they get better over time. I would like to share the same message. For me, the D-day mechanism bought me time.

BY ESTHER CHUNG [chung.juhee@joongang.co.kr]