Puchon International Fantastic Film Festival to be held from July 15-25, 2011 is internationally the second most imporant film festivl in the Republic of Korea. With hundreds of films and tens of thousands of spectators, PiFan is among the most important presentations of genre films worldwide. Science fiction, fantasy, horror, crime and action movies consist the core of the festival. Twelve genre films from the United States, Canada, Britain, France, Japan, Korea, Hong Kong, Malaysia and Mongolia are to be screened as a part of Puchon Choice Featire international film competition.

This year, one of the five-members-strong jury is Ambassador of the Czech Republic to the Republic of Korea Mr. Jaroslav Olša, jr. He was invited to be a jury member in recognition of his long-term involvement in science fiction literatury and film. Ambassador Olša, jr. has translated and edited numerous genre books in Czech and English during the 1980s and 1990s, he is a co-editor of the only Czech-language science fiction encyclopedia published with Ondřej Neff in 1995 and in 1990 he created the very first Czech professional science fiction monthly Ikarie (now published under title XB-1), the title of which was selected in honour of the most famous Czech hard science fiction movie Ikarie XB-1 (1963). He has also published science fiction anthologie in the Czech Republic, India, Zimbabwe – and most recently – in Korea. (see more at http://www.mzv.cz/seoul/en/about_the_embassy/ambassador/index.html)