Cicadas

 Despite record low birthrates in South Korea, the summer days are filled with whaling cries. It's that time of year when the bugs start to sing again. 

If you're unfamiliar with what cicadas sound like, imagine a Mandrake had a baby with a giant horsefly. God is creative like that. They're exceedingly raucous and quite gruesome to look at. And when I was a kid, my least favorite thing about summer visits to Korea was, unsurprisingly, the incessant droning background symphony of cicada families harmonizing to destroy my ears. Perhaps I despised these small yet noisy creatures because they represented the insufferable humid heat waves. Perhaps I felt wronged for having a peaceful headspace stripped away. After all, it's difficult to drown out a lone speaker perched outside your windowsill, let alone a colony. 

Having spent most of my life in Southern California and most recently New Jersey, I had long forgotten about their presence...