The reshuffling came after the KMT's poor performance in key local elections Saturday, an electoral upset for which Ma apologized.

"We must recognize that some public dissatisfaction derives from the government's inappropriate behavior," Ma said at the KMT's Taipei headquarters, referring to "the government's public relations and crisis management skills."

Ma has concurrently served as the KMT chairman since October.

"The KMT must improve its...image," he said, adding, "We feel ashamed and must apologize to the public."

King Pu-tsung, who served as Taipei vice mayor during Ma's second term as Taipei mayor from 1998-2006, is reportedly one of Ma's most trusted advisers and will take over as KMT secretary general, replacing Chan Chun-po, who will stay on in his concurrent post of KMT vice chairman, the party's spokesman, Li Chien-jung, said at the KMT headquarters after calls for top-down party reform.

Local media have reported that King, a savvy political strategist, was a key player in Ma's presidential campaign. But after Ma took office in May last year, King left politics for a stint as a visiting scholar at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

He now reportedly holds a similar position at the Brookings Institution, a U.S. think tank, and is expected to return to Taiwan soon to help run the day-to-day activities of the KMT.

On Saturday, the KMT lost two county magistrate seats in island-wide local government elections, with one such seat going to the main opposition Democratic Progressive Party. The KMT's poor showing has been widely interpreted as a rebuke to Ma's administration and the beginning of a comeback for the DPP.

Ma has been under fire for poorly communicating to the public his plans to enhance relations across the Taiwan Strait, dreary economic indicators amid the global economic crisis and his administration's slow response to a typhoon that killed some 700 people in August.