At last, the Constitutional Court’s verdict on the impeachment of President Yoon Suk Yeol has been released. Now, Yoon is impeached, thus removed from office and deprived of all presidential privileges. Before the Court’s ruling, many Koreans were against the impeachment. To our relief, however, they seem to have decided to completely go along with the result.

Now we should put an end to the rambunctious socio-political mayhem that has disrupted and divided our country for the past four months and go back to normal as fast as we can. If we keep up this interminable clashing of polarized ideologies amid our imminent global storms, South Korea will soon find itself without a captain, shipwrecked or even capsized. Politicians should know that ordinary people get furious and may take matters into their own hands when unbearably protracted political brawls jeopardize their country’s national security.

Where, then, should we go from now? First, to a land of peace and serenity. For that purpose, the ruling party and the opposition party must stop their internal fighting and start to parley with each other instead, at least until the forthcoming international crisis is over. If they do so, we can have a beacon of hope. Otherwise, we will be doomed to be swept away by the unprecedented global storm that will be catastrophic to our country.

Looking back upon the past, we realize the left-wing opposition party has always crippled the rightwing party to seize power. For example, it effectively disabled the Lee Myung-bak administration by igniting people’s fury through mad cow disease propaganda, demolished the Park Geun-hye administration by impeachment and paralyzed the Yoon Suk Yeol administration by trying to impeach many government officials, including the president. In the past, it also sent two ex-presidents, Lee and Park, to prison and ensured that Park would be sentenced to 20 years. Now, it should stop such a ruthless political vendetta and try to co-exist peacefully.

The same thing goes for the Korean people, who are sharply divided and polarized by the left vs. the right, socialism vs. capitalism, or people’s democracy vs. liberal democracy. In today’s Korea, even parents and children try to shun discussions on politics because it will make them turn against each other and become political enemies. Under these circumstances, no scintillating conversations are possible among family members. We should stop this internal bleeding, which is fatal to our national health.

Some experts have pointed out that we should revise our Constitution to prevent the president from wielding absolute power. They argue that we need to change our presidential system to a cabinet system. However, some people wonder, “If our presidents had absolute power, how come they were impeached consecutively? Perhaps the real problem lies somewhere else.”

Recently, Oh Se-jung, former president of Seoul National University, wrote in his newspaper column that we should also implement laws to prevent our lawmakers from paralyzing the administration by overusing their power and impeaching the president, cabinet ministers or high-ranking government officials indiscriminately.

While we have hopelessly indulged in internal skirmishes, the world has begun an unprecedented trade war due to the American government’s drastic tariff increases. Now Korean companies face 25 percent tariffs when they export their products to the US, and American companies must pay 34 percent custom taxes when they sell products to China. The drastic increase in tariffs will immediately cause a worldwide price increase. It will be a hard blow, especially for countries that heavily depend on trade. It is a silent war, but the casualties are heavy.

The world is also at war between Free World countries and totalitarian socialist countries, as we see through the constant territorial disputes, ideology wars and global leadership rivalries. Unfortunately, South Korea is vulnerable to all these conflicts. We know that two authoritarian socialist countries think that South Korea is their former territory. We also know that socialist countries are always behind our ideological clashes. In addition, we know that South Korea is geopolitically caught in the crossfire between big, strong countries that want to be global leaders.

Therefore, we have no time to waste on internal factional fights. Instead, we need to hurriedly prepare for a severe tornado that might devastate our economy, stability and national security. There will be a presidential election in early June; at that time, we must choose a truly competent president who can deal with the upcoming tsunami skillfully, who knows international affairs quite well, and who is dexterous in diplomacy. We need an ideology-free, non-populist leader who can steer our country in the right direction with his future-oriented global mindset. We do not want our leader to drag our nation into the past or turn it into a socialist country.

Indeed, the destiny of South Korea depends on our choice of the next leader and the path leading beyond the June election.

Kim Seong-kon

Kim Seong-kon is a professor emeritus of English at Seoul National University and a visiting scholar at Dartmouth College. The views expressed here are the writer’s own. -- Ed.