In 1950, after the establishment of the Kuomintang (Chinese Nationalist Party) committee, Yu became a member of its review committee. In 1956, Yu received the first National Literary Award presented by the Ministry of Education. In arranging his diaries in 1962, Yu wrote poetry revealing pain at not being able to return to his hometown in China. Yu died from pneumonia in 1964 at Taipei Veterans General Hospital and in 1967 his remains were interred at Datun Mountain in Taipei's Yangmingshan National Park. In 1966 a large bronze statue of Yu Youren was placed at the summit of Yushan. The statue remained there until 1996 when it was cut down and thrown into a ravine by Taiwan independence activists.