Two U.S. congressmen introduced a resolution to the House of Representatives last week calling on both the Congress and the Bush administration to help arrange family reunions of Korean-American citizens who were separated from their relatives in North Korea before and during the Korean War.

The resolution was submitted by Reps. Edward R. Royce (R) and Javier Becerra (D) from California.

In the resolution, they noted that in Korea, the pain of those who were separated from their families for a half century is beginning to be healed through the inter-Korean family reunions that were made possible by the easing of tensions on the Korean Peninsula in the wake of the South-North summit meeting in June last year.

They also pointed out that the United States is now home to some 500,000 Korean-Americans who were separated from their North Korean family members by the Korean War.

In the lawmakers' resolution, they stressed the need for the United States, as a nation valuing world peace, to arrange family reunions between Korean-Americans and their North Korean family members.