It is hard to accept, but it seems almost inevitable that Koreans will have to continue living with a president who about 90 percent of them think is unfit for the post.
This is primarily because there is no way to immediately bring Park down from her post or force her to take a backseat in running the government.
State prosecutors now say Park herself is a criminal suspect in the Choi Soon-sil corruption and influence-peddling case, which would probably make people even more frustrated and enraged by this cold reality.
A defiant Park -- speaking through her spokesman and defense attorney -- denied the charges that she played a key role in extorting funds from conglomerates for two nonprofit foundations and transferred presidential speech texts and other classified documents to Choi.
Accusing the state prosecution of political bias, Park went on to say that she would not keep her previous promise to undergo questioning by prosecutors.
This is not the first time Park has lied or changed her position, but she -- a person mandated to safeguard the Constitution and undertake the rule of law -- is in effect snubbing legitimate enforcement of the law. It wouldn’t be a surprise if more angry citizens turned up at the anti-Park candlelight vigils this weekend.
However, Park refuses to be swayed, which is why the opposition’s decision to seek her impeachment is welcome.
Both the Democratic Party of Korea and the People’s Party endorsed the plan -- to which their potential presidential candidates had agreed the previous day – at the party level Monday.
Some express skepticism, citing the uncertain period of time needed and the possibility that either the National Assembly or the Constitutional Court might turn down Park’s impeachment.
There is some grounds for skepticism, but prosecutors have secured enough evidence and testimonies to put Park in jail, if not for her Constitutional immunity, so it would be dereliction of duty if the National Assembly did not take the only possible action to legally punish a sitting president.
Moreover, opposition parties hold a majority of the parliamentary seats, and about 30 members of the ruling Saenuri Party have already declared their support for the start of the impeachment process. This raises the likelihood that a motion to impeach Park would be able to earn the required votes of two-thirds of the 300-member parliament.
Legal experts also said that given the suspicions raised against Park by state prosecutors, her case would be different from the 2004 case of the late President Roh Moo-hyun, in which the Constitutional Court revoked the parliament’s decision to impeach him for lack of serious misdeeds.
Nevertheless, it remains to be seen how the parliament -- opposition members to be exact -- will work on the impeachment plan. This strengthens the logical grounds for a proposal to amend the Constitution and hold the next presidential election earlier than December next year.
This merits consideration because Park’s term of office which is to run through February 2018 could be shortened in a legal, orderly way.
Even before the Choi scandal broke out, opinion surveys found that a majority of the public and lawmakers support amendment of the Constitution whose key clauses were written in 1987 in the wake of a pro-democracy movement.
The Constitution’s power structure is based on a five-year single term for the president -- a clause aimed at ending decades-long dictatorships -- but still the basic law, as seen in the Choi scandal, gives the president too much power.
So there is sufficient grounds for the National Assembly to start work on revising the Constitution right away, although reaching an agreement among the political parties might be not be easy, in view of the upcoming presidential election for which each party and potential candidate will have different strategies.
The parliament should not miss the chance to kill two birds with one stone: An orderly settlement of the unprecedented leadership crisis and giving the nation a Constitution that meets the demands of the times and the people.
