[EDITORIALS]It’s time to calm down

Every way one turns, people are talking about impeachment. In the workplace, in schools, among friends, in parents’ meetings and even among families, people are debating throughout the night about the unprecedented act. Fights have broken out because of differences of opinion, even among family members. More unfortunately, a taxi driver and his client were booked for scuffling over a radio program that dealt with impeachment.
Things are worse on the Internet: A public toilet room must be cleaner than this. There are expressions that make us wonder about the mental state of the person who would write such lines as “I will kill your family,” “I will stab your stomach,” and “I will bash your brains.”
Internet users are busy drawing a line between those who support and those who oppose impeachment. The general sentiment is that if you agree with me we are allies, if not, enemies.
An unprecedented impeachment of a president, to be sure, is a big event. Naturally, people are concerned about it. But South Korea is not the only country to face impeachment against a sitting president. The country must go on as usual, and that means each of its members has to perform his everyday role. The real crisis sets in when people put their jobs and social roles on the back burner and castigate those who disagree as enemies.
We can look to the example of Venezuela, where a political crisis over a referendum on its president, Hugo Chavez, has thrown the country into major uncertainty. There are violent rallies, in which an opposition party leader was shot to death by the forces quelling the demonstration. A total of nine people have died, and 100 have been injured in the South American nation. The country may be far away, but what is happening there hits strangely close to home.
It has been six days since the National Assembly impeached the president. We have had sufficient discussion about the impeachment, whether it was right and whether we agree or disagree with it.
It is time now to calm down, and go back to our daily livelihood and lives. There should be no more instigating division in a country already moaning and groaning over regional, generational, class and political differences.