By Kang Hyun-kyung
Staff Reporter
About half South Koreans view positively the sending of non-combat forces to Afghanistan if the U.S. government requests Seoul to do so, a recent public opinion survey found.
A poll conducted by the Social Trend Institute showed that 49.7 percent of respondents answered positively to dispatching non-military forces such as medical doctors, construction workers and education workers to Afghanistan.
About 28.3 percent opposed the idea.
The same survey also found more South Koreans are critical about the Lee Myung-bak administration's foreign policy toward the United States.
About 52.4 percent answered unfavorably toward President Lee's U.S. policy, while 43.4 percent backed it.
The poll of 700 citizens was taken on August 7 with a margin of error of plus or minus 3.7 percentage points.
The results were made public at a time when the U.S. government reportedly looks forward to South Korea sending more Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRT) to Afghanistan.
The first PRT was created in Gardez in Afghanistan in November 2002 with the task to assess humanitarian needs and small-scale reconstruction projects and several PRTs in other areas followed the next year.
Yonhap News reported that Washington wants Seoul to send more PRT forces from the current 18 to up to 300 to meet the rising demand for non-military services.
It reported that the ministry overseeing sending non-combat forces overseas was skeptical over the idea of dispatching civilian forces to the country whose security condition is vulnerable to terrorism.
Another source from the government, however, denied the report saying the government has not received that kind of request from Washington.
The government plans to send five more PRT members to Afghanistan to take care of police services there at the end of August.