Premier,
Republic of China
Yu Shyi-kun was born on April 25, 1948, in Taiho Village, Tungshan, Ilan County,
Taiwan. Raised in a poor tenant farming family near the Tungshan River that
always flooded, he worked very hard during his childhood. In 1961, his father
died of tuberculosis. As the eldest son in the family, he was forced to quit
junior high school to work full-time as a farmer on six acres of land, but he
was not content to give up his opportunity to get an education.
At the age of 19, Mr. Yu passed the entrance exam to study at the supplementary
night school of the Lotung Commercial High School. It was not until he was 37
that Mr. Yu graduated from the department of politics at Tunghai University.
Every stage of Mr. Yu's education was completed by will power.
Before he reached the age of 20, Mr. Yu joined the Youth Party and followed
senior political leader Kuo Yu-hsin as a "political apprentice." Later, Mr. Yu
served as Lin I-hsiung's campaign manager for the provincial assembly election.
In 1978, Mr. Yu married Yang Pao-yu. The couple has two sons.
When Mr. Yu served in the provincial assembly, he impressed everyone with his
outstanding performance. On September 28, 1986, Mr. Yu announced a conference
to form a political party, and the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) was born
as the first opposition party under martial law. Mr. Yu was re-elected four
times to the DPP Central Standing Committee. In 1990, after being elected magistrate
of Ilan County, Mr. Yu resigned his DPP position and began to concentrate his
efforts on Ilan County.
During the eight years he served as magistrate, Mr. Yu recruited talented individuals.
He tried to develop a unique style of administration in such areas as tourism,
environmental protection, culture, and information. After completing his term
as county magistrate in 1997, Taipei Mayor Chen Shui-bian invited Mr. Yu to
join the Taipei City Government as chairman of the Taipei Rapid Transit Corporation
(TRTC). Following Mr. Chen Shui-bian's loss of the Taipei mayoral election at
the end of 1998, Mr. Yu resigned his position in the Taipei City Government
and accepted an appointment by DPP Chairman Lin I-hsiung as the party's secretary-general.
During his tenure as secretary- general, Mr. Yu helped Chairman Lin manage
and promote DPP party affairs. In addition, his previous eight years of experience
as Ilan County magistrate established Mr. Yu as an expert on cultural administration.
He taught several classes on the subject at the graduate school of traditional
arts at the National Institute of the Arts, now the Taipei National University
of the Arts.
During the 2000 election for tenth-term president and vice president, Mr. Yu
served concurrently as DPP secretary-general and director and chief spokesman
for the DPP presidential campaign. With the DPP victory on March 18, 2000, Mr.
Yu was appointed vice premier of the new government that same year.
In July 2000, the "Pachang Creek Tragedy" occurred, resulting in unprecedented
public outrage. Vice Premier Yu, who was serving concurrently as chairman of
the Council of Disaster Prevention, immediately tendered his resignation to
take political responsibility for the incident and help ease public anger. After
a six-month hiatus from politics, Mr. Yu was once again pressed into service
by President Chen Shui-bian, who appointed him secretary-general to the Office
of the President.
In February 2002, President Chen Shui-bian appointed Mr. Yu premier. In his
first administrative report to the Legislative Yuan, he announced four new primary
policy objectives for the cabinet. These four goals are "to establish a new
style of politics based on maintaining a simple, straightforward, results-oriented
attitude; creating a new economy centered around technology; setting up a new
society founded on the spirit of cooperation; and building a new Taiwan rooted
in human values."
