Someone can stop a rooster from crowing by twisting its neck, as late President Kim Young-sam once said, but you cannot stop the dawn from coming. Again, many unpleasant incidents over the past year are becoming bygones as we greet the New Year.

2016 is an election year. The world is paying attention to the U.S. presidential campaign, and through the Nov. 8 election, the person who will succeed President Barack Obama is to emerge.

Before South Korea maps out diplomatic strategies with the coming 45th U.S. president, the country will hold its 20th general election on April 13.

It is also a sports year. Two of its several major events are scheduled in the summer: the Euro 2016 finals in France, slated for June and July, and the Rio Olympics in August.

For the Korean government, President Park Geun-hye appears to be running out of time. In just two years, the next President-elect will be forming his or her transition committee. Her tenure expires alongside with the closing ceremony of the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympics.

Korea will shortly enter the 2017 presidential campaign mode. So there is no time for the Park administration to waste in 2016. State affairs should be pushed forward in a tighter manner.

One of the few core affairs must be reinvigoration of the economy, which — despite the bullish housing market — remained in the doldrums in 2015, due to lackluster exports and weaker-than-expected private consumption.

The export slump was largely attributable to international economic conditions. Nevertheless, the corporate sector is projected to regain its power, buoyed by the ongoing stimulus policies in China and the eurozone, as well as the apparent rebound in the U.S. economy. The three are major trade partners for Korea.

Chronic problems are seen in local consumption. The continuous record-breaking in total household debt indicates that a large portion of low and middle-income earners have less ability to spend more.

It is not merely a possible side effect of the government’s 2015 policy to induce more households to mortgages loans in its bid to vitalize the construction and property market.

The graver side of the situation is that quite a few citizens have been ineligible to take loans from first-tier banks in the aftermath of the lenders’ stern screening of borrowers’ credit standings and their collateral value.

So citizens with low credit scores or whose income level is relatively low had to resort to lending from secondary financial firms on annual rates of between 15 and 25 percent. Rates charged by the third-tier industry, effectively loan sharks, are over 30 percent.

Policymakers should streamline the process of the state-led microloans — which are aimed at converting loans on high rates to ones on lower rates using government funds — and ease the loan qualifications to broaden the scope of beneficiaries.

In addition, financial regulators should seek active legislation on instructing the second and third-tier moneylenders to further lower interest rates.

The 2003 credit card fiasco should not be repeated. If the nation fails to create a soft-landing for household debt, the result will be a great number of credit defaulters. As many scholars warned, the swelling household debt is a serious threat to the overall economy, including domestic demand-oriented businesses.

Now the epoch-making era of the Fintech and Internet-only banks is about to kick off. We hope to no longer see news like household debt hitting an all-time high of 1.2 quadrillion won ($1.02 trillion).

In the aspects of social soundness as well as financial health, we hope policymakers take the New Year as a jumping-off point, preventing further widening disparity between the haves and have-nots. Unbearable debt could trigger crime and critical social conflict.

For inter-Korean relations, the incumbent government is required to restart things by taking a reconciliatory approach on a gradual basis, instead of uttering such fancy words as reunification.

Park needs to take bolder initiatives toward her young counterpart in Pyongyang. A wish is that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un also takes corresponding steps to curb down tensions on the peninsula, improve relations with Seoul and Washington and take the communist country out of international isolation.

There are forecasts that Kim, who has held no summit since taking the helm in 2012, could push for summits with Chinese and Russian leaders in 2016. South Korea should make the best of the possibility of more active diplomacy from Kim, irrespective of whether or not an inter-Korean summit occurs.

Toward another neighbor, Japan, the government should prioritize the wartime victims and the Korean citizens’ sentiment. Normalization of the bilateral state relations cannot precede a righteous settlement of the sex slavery issue.

Renegotiations could be one of several options should both the Korean and Japanese governments really want to conclude a sincere appeasement and apology for the victims.

Otherwise, it may invite greater public anger among citizens in connection with the ongoing backlash against Park-led plan to reintroduce the stat-authored national history textbooks for all teenage students.

One of the allegations raised by opponents of state-controlled textbook publication is that some lawmakers of the pro-government Saenuri Party are seeking to whitewash the misdeeds of pro-Japanese collaborators during Japanese colonial rule (1910-1945).

There is no way of making state policy irreversible if it goes against the dominant opinion of the public, which certainly includes real conservatives.

For a developed society and the world’s 11th-largest economy, Korea has to pay more attention to multicultural families residing in the nation and inbound tourists.

Park is believed to be the most globalized Korean president in a variety of ways. She could take the initiative in upgrading the national image by fostering a better environment for foreign residents and investors during the rest of her term.

The president still has 26 months left in office. Citizens and voters will monitor her performance from early 2016 to February 2018, when the 23rd Winter Olympic games will be held in PyeongChang, Gangneung and Jeongseon in the northeastern province of Gangwon.

We hope her speech during the opening ceremony of the sports festival will attract worldwide attention and warm applause from spectators. It is the right time to put on a spurt.