On Friday the National Assembly votes on whether to impeach President Park Geun-hye over a massive corruption scandal that has cost her the trust of the entire country. By now the situation is so bad that even lawmakers in her own faction can no longer countenance letting her stay in nominal office until April.

But judging by the way of the opposition parties behaving, the chaos is expected to continue even if the National Assembly votes to impeach her.

Moon Jae-in, the former head of the Minjoo Party, now says Park must be forced to step down even if the impeachment vote passes, which would set in motion several months of deliberation by the Constitutional Court, and all three opposition parties have come round to that view. This suggests they want maximum chaos as long as possible to make political capital.

Already government business has ground to a screeching halt. Japanese Deputy Prime Minister Taro Aso said a few days ago he cannot continue talks over resuming a currency-swap deal with Korea because he does not know who to talk to.

Seoul proposed the currency-swap deal to shield the economy from abrupt external shocks. It is an important matter, but the opposition simply refused to participate in a hearing to appoint a new finance minister.

A summit between the leaders of Korea, China and Japan scheduled for Dec. 18-19 will not take place, and at a crucial time in international affairs Korea sent only the caretaker prime minister to the APEC forum in November, where he could not have any meetings with any of the world leaders because they outranked him.

Only a vice foreign minister, meanwhile, has been able to meet with advisers to U.S. president-elect Donald Trump. And who will go to the Davos forum where world leaders gather again in January next year is anybody's guess.

At home, the Defense Ministry is not even bothering to find out what information was compromised in a massive hack of its Intranet in August, and there are growing fears of a North Korean provocation in January of next year, when tougher UN sanctions take effect. What, if anything, is being done to prepare for that threat is anybody's guess.

The state-run Korea Development Institute has slashed its economic growth forecast for the country this year to 2.4 percent before even taking the current crisis into account, and Japan's Nomura Securities puts it at less than two percent due to political instability. That would mean the loss of at least 60,000 jobs.

Troubling signs are already apparent, including low-income households seeing their earnings drop 16 percent. Yet the government has been unable to plan next year's budget. Restructuring of the troubled steel and petrochemical industries is still sitting on the back burner, and companies have been unable to decide on business plans for next year.

Nobody in this country denies these security and economic risks, but the scandal has overshadowed all other issues.

Once the impeachment vote is counted, the rest can be left up to the legal process, while an independent counsel probes the scandal further. Lawmakers urgently need to get back to serious work.

