Hi all,
I am a Taiwanese living in Canada. I am thinking of taking a year off from school to complete my military service in Taiwan. I think it would be a good life experience and will help to build teamwork and leadership skills, as well as improve my Mandarin. The thing is, I will have exactly 12 months off. I realise that the current service term is 12 months. But I’ve heard that the interview, physical, and placement process takes a while. Does anybody know exactly how long this takes? If I were to return to Taiwan tomorrow what is the first thing I need to do to get this whole process started?
Cheers,
I don’t think your plan will work.
You don’t just show up and start your service right away. It’s quite a tedious process with a lot of waiting.
My memory is a little fuzzy but IIRC, I think there are two enlistments per year, separated into first half and second half. To get into the second enlistment, I registered around April. Then you just sit around and wait until they call you up for service.
I think I got the letter around August. After-which you need to go to the hospital and do all your physicals. A month after that is when I actually started my service.
But I did the substitute service, not the regular army, so it could be different.
Summary:
April - Registered
August - Received draft letter
September - Began service