The National Assembly's Defense Committee passed a motion Thursday to dispatch a 150-member army engineering unit to Afghanistan. The unit will operate in the war-torn country until Dec. 31 this year. South Korea currently maintains an army medical team and a transportation unit in Afghanistan. The motion will likely pass through the plenary session of the National Assembly Feb. 22 to allow the troops to travel to Afghanistan in February. The government convened a meeting of the National Security Council (NSC) last October to make a decision on the dispatch of the engineering unit.