The Ministry of National Defense yesterday unveiled the nation's first Hokkien-language television commercial for military academy recruitment.
With a male voice-over, the 30-second commercial features several elementary school children dreaming of becoming soldiers when they grow up while playing with wooden toy guns in their schoolyard.
The message the ministry wants to convey through the commercial is that defending the country is the dream of every citizen and that by joining the military, citizens can realize that dream.
The commercial was shown to the public for the first time yesterday at a regular ministry press conference. It has not yet aired on television.
The TV spot is the first of its kind in Hokkien. Commercials of the same vein have previously been in Mandarin and one was even in English.
The commercial created a stir at KMT-affiliated radio stations and newspapers, with several reporters asking if the new ad means that Hokkien is to be the dominant language of the military.
Some also asked whether commercials in Hakka and other languages should also be created in the interest of fairness.
In response, Colonel Chiu Chao-li (
"We decided to use Hokkien mainly because we want the commercial to be more acceptable to a majority of people on the island," Chiu said.
Ministry spokesman Major General Huang Sui-sheng (黃穗生) did say, however, that the military would consider the suggestion of using other languages in future cadet-recruitment commercials.
Meanwhile, the ministry announced that the number of people applying for admission into one of the nation's military academies reached a record high of 3,288 this year, six times the number of applicants who applied last year.
Colonel Chiu said the new freshman class is the best the military has seen.
"Most of these admitted applicants have outstanding academic records, on par with those of students being accepted to state universities in the civilian sector," Chiu said.
The development suggests that the previous trend of only students with poor grades applying to military academies could be changing.
"The military is buying into increasingly high-tech weaponry. The type of personnel we need in the future has to be academically well-trained," Chiu said.
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