The U.S. House Committee on Foreign Affairs passed a bill on Wednesday that would put new pressure on the State Department to work with the South Korean government to allow Korean-American families to visit with relatives in North Korea.

The legislation argues that Korean-Americans who were separated from family members in the DPRK after the Korean War have been consistently excluded from past reunions — rare and often deeply emotional meetings, where elderly survivors of the war are allowed to embrace siblings and cousins they haven’t seen since childhood — and urges the State Department to change that going forward.