HONOLULU - Tongjin Samuel Lee's older brother escaped south as war raged on the Korean peninsula in the 1950s. His father, a minister, planned to follow just as soon as he finished leading a prayer meeting.

He never made it. Neither did Lee's eldest brother and his two sisters, dividing the family for more than 50 years.

Now 90, the retired Honolulu minister is joining hundreds of other Korean Americans in a campaign to pressure the U.S. and North Korean governments to put them back in touch with their long-lost relatives.

Lee and others realize there may be only a slim chance that their family members are still alive. But they hope at least to learn what happened to their brothers, sisters, parents and children in North Korea.

"My youngest sister might be living. Otherwise I feel they might be all gone because of their age," said Lee, who moved to the United States in 1938 to study at a Chicago seminary and become a Christian minister. "We don't know where she is, living or dead. We have no idea."

Millions of families remain separated following the division of the Korean Peninsula in 1945 and the 1950-53 Korean War.

In the United States, Lee and other hopefuls have gathered under the umbrella of an organization called Saemsori to lobby Congress for a resolution backing their cause. They also want the U.S. government to push North Korea to put them in touch with their families.

So far, 300 people in Hawaii and 1,000 across the United States have signed up with Saemsori. The organization's name means "voice of a stream" in Korean and symbolizes the currents running through North and South.

Saemsori hopes many more will join them: the latest Census figures say there are at least 1.4 million Americans of Korean descent. Between 200,000 to a half-million are believed to have immediate family members in North Korea.

"For these Americans, North Korea is not an abstract idea. It's as real as the face of a lost daughter, a childhood home or a father's grave," Alice Jean Suh, director of the Saemsori project, told family members in Honolulu Monday. "All they want, many of them, is to know their families are still alive. To send a letter, to make a phone call, to see a face."

Suh spoke at the first of several information sessions Saemsori plans to hold around the nation. Suh and other leaders will meet with families in Los Angeles on Wednesday and then head to Chicago and New York in coming months.

U.S. Rep. Ed Case, D-Hawaii, said Congress has the power to raise awareness of the issue.

"The tragedy of divided families - I think it would be news to most American citizens. They just wouldn't have this in their consciousness," Case said.

Case has a personal link to the cause: his mother-in-law was born in North Korea and left a grandmother and an uncle behind when she headed south in the 1950s.

He said Congress could help make it U.S. policy to back the Saemsori project - a step organizers say would be critical to elicit action from Pyongyang.

But he added Korean-Americans would have to lobby their own members of Congress to create the political support for the effort on Capitol Hill.

So far, Saemsori has the backing of 12 U.S. representatives and senators, including Case and Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., the chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

There is some precedent for the effort.

The two Koreas have held 13 brief but deeply emotional reunions for divided family members since 2000. The meetings have brought together 13,600 Koreans from opposite sides of the border, many of them senior citizens who waited decades for the chance to see their loved ones again.

Stephen Linton, head of a nonprofit aid organization that helped launch Saemsori, said Pyongyang would likely respond favorably to U.S. requests for help because the isolated communist state was eager for direct dialogue with Washington.

Saemsori could face opposition from strong U.S. critics of North Korea and Pyongyang's totalitarian leader Kim Jong Il. But Linton, who heads the Eugene Bell Foundation, said it could win them over by keeping the organization's activities fully transparent.

Lee, the retired minister, said he wasn't sure what he'd say to his sister, Hwasil Lee, if he got the chance. He last got word of her in 1946 when Lee's father wrote in a letter that she had married a young man only to see Russians arrest him and take him away.

"That's all I know of my sister," Lee said.

ON THE NET

Saemsori: http://www.saemsori.org/index.html