5 years, 11 months

I listen to the chirrups of cicadas on a summer day after the end of a raining spell. Their chirping chorus from maple trees and poplars surrounding the walls makes the silence of the prison even more profound.

 

The most common kinds of cicadas in Korea are the robust cicada and the big brown cicada. They both have a life span of six years. Of the six years, a cicada spends five years and eleven months underground as a larva. During this period the larva sucks the juice from tree roots and sheds its skin four times. And in the sixth summer of its life, it chooses a fine day to come out of the ground, into the air, and up a tree. [Shenzi]