Dersu Uzala
While in high school, Pyun worked at a number of production houses in Honolulu before receiving an invitation by the Japanese actor, Toshiro Mifune, to travel to Japan for an internship. Initially Pyun was to intern on the Akira Kurosawa film, "Dersu Uzala", which was to star Mifune but the actor decided not to do the film and instead Pyun found himself working on a Mifune TV series under the tutelage of Kurosawa's Director of Photography, Takao Saito ("Red Beard").