Bills
| 3.23.22

Encouraging the reunion of Korean-Americans with their family members in North Korea (H. Con. Res. 40)

Do you support or oppose this bill?

What is H. Con. Res. 40?

(Updated March 15, 2018)

This concurrent resolution expresses that Congress encourages North Korea to allow Korean-Americans to meet with their family members from North Korea.


Further, this concurrent resolution calls on North Korea to take concrete steps to build goodwill that is conducive to peace on the Korean Peninsula.

Argument in favor

Reuniting dividing Korean-American families with their North Korean relatives is a worthy humanitarian goal, and Congress should help facilitate it as much as possible.

Argument opposed

Regardless of what Congress encourages, these reunions are dependant on the cooperation of North Korea -- which can hardly be considered a reliable partner in this endeavor.

Impact

Korean-American families with relatives in North Korea.

Cost of H. Con. Res. 40

A CBO cost estimate is unavailable.

Additional Info

In-Depth: After the end of the Korean War in 1953, the communist Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK or North Korea) has been divided from the democratic Republic of Korea (South Korea) by the 38th parallel -- which separated millions of Koreans from their families. Since the end of the war, no exchanges of letters, telephone calls, or emails have been allowed between North and South Koreans.

North Korea and South Korea have established a reunion program where the divided families meet for a few hours on the border between the two countries. However, the frequency of the reunions has been subject to the political and militaristic tensions between the neighboring nations, and have been stopped and restarted several times since their creation.

In 2007 the Congressional Research Service estimated that there are between 104,000 and 500,000 Korean Americans with immediate North Korean family members. It also stated that only 80 Korean Americans have been able to meet their North Korean family members through the reunion program that South Korea and North Korea have facilitated. The number of reunions involving Korean-Americans has grown into the hundreds, but time is of the essence as the populations on both sides of the divide age.


Media:

Summary by Eric Revell
(Photo Credit: Divided Families Foundation / Creative Commons)