Chai-Shin Yu was born on April 11, 1932, in Ch'aho, Korea during the Japanese colonial period.
[3] He received a Master of Arts degree from Hartford Seminary Foundation in 1967, and then received a Master of Arts in religion in 1969 from McMaster University[4] for his graduate thesis, A Critical Examintion of Suzuki's Understanding of Ch'an (Zen) Buddhism.
[6] In 1973, Yu was awarded his PhD in Religious Sciences for his PhD thesis, A Comparative Study of the Founder's Authority, the Community, and the Discipline in Early Buddhism and in Early Christianity.
[8] In 1977, Chai-Shin Yu was appointed as a visiting part-time assistant professor at the University of Toronto to teach EAS 270: Introduction to Korean Studies, which would become the first course in the Korean studies program.
[13] Yu was given the Seongnyu Medal of the Order of Civil Merit by the South Korean government in 2006.