Soaring Over Danyang — Cafe Sann

Interviewee Jang Daehan

Interviewer Ryu Sunwoo

Could you briefly introduce Cafe San?
It’s a place where you can face the river and the mountains, the stars and the sunset. Here, you can set your thoughts aside for a moment, lay them down on the lawn, and watch the sun go down. The view is shared by everyone, regardless of age, race, or nationality, and it makes you think about the spirit in which we should live on this planet. The moments you share here with the people you love also tend to stay with you for a long time, under the names of life, happiness, and family. I work to share that experience with as many people as possible.

What led you to settle in Dusan Village in Danyang?
Dusan Village is blessed with a natural environment so favorable that more than 300 days a year are suitable for flying. You could call it one of the world’s leading paragliding hubs. Mountain slopes that are ideal for *ridge flying and a beautifully flowing river blend into the picture-perfect village. It’s said that wheat, barley, and other crops were grown here long ago, and that potato fields were cultivated later on. Even in the 1970s, at the height of the slash-and-burn field clearance program, residents grew tobacco here to support their children. Pilot Jang Seonyeong, the founder of Cafe San, first discovered Dusan Village in 1991. He was overwhelmed by this nameless village, which had no roads and no signs. He joined forces with a handful of fellow fliers, cut a road through the barren fields, and founded a paragliding school. That was the beginning of Cafe San.
*A flying method that uses the updrafts rising along a mountain ridge

Dusan Village is now called a center of paragliding. What makes it so appealing as a paragliding spot?
Is there anywhere else in the world where you can take in, from the sky, the Namhangang River running through Danyang, a UNESCO Global Geopark, and the grand sweep of the Sobaek Mountains, with ridge after ridge rolling on?

I heard that you’re a paragliding pilot. When did you first encounter paragliding?
The pilot who founded Cafe San was a big influence. I learned to fly from him.

Is there a special reason you run a paragliding experience site and a cafe together?
At the time, tandem paragliding, in which a professional pilot flies with an ordinary person, was unfamiliar in Korea, and there was no system of regulations or insurance in place to turn it into a business. We visited the local government to explain why a launch site was needed, and we worked with insurers to create the insurance product that tandem flights required. We also negotiated the relevant procedures with the Seoul Regional Aviation Administration, which gave us the foundation to operate a tandem flight business legally. It was like climbing a mountain, making the path one step at a time.
And that wasn’t the end of it. In the 2010s, as visitors began to increase in earnest, our infrastructure fell short. We had far too few pilots for the number of guests, and the waiting area was poor, so guests had to wait for long stretches under the scorching sun. Hundreds of cars came and went on the narrow village road every day, which led to conflicts with residents. For a sustainable future, we needed a place to pause and think. After much deliberation, we opened Cafe San, a third space where people can soothe one another’s short and long hours with the language of coffee.

How does the paragliding experience at Cafe San work? Do you have any tips for first-timers?
Because a veteran pilot flies with you, anyone from a five-year-old to a senior can try it easily. If you follow the pilot’s instructions, the flight is safe. You can enjoy beautiful scenery all day, but we recommend flying between noon and 3 p.m., when the wind direction and strength are most stable. Near sunset the sky is beautiful, but the wind shifts, and flying conditions are actually worse.

Is there a season or time of day you’d recommend?
I recommend autumn! Compared with other seasons, there are more updrafts and more days with stable flying conditions, so it’s a great season for paragliding. It’s also the perfect time to take in fallen leaves as colorful as fruit, ripening grain, and the warm sunshine.

I heard that the ingredients for the cafe and bakery come from the Danyang area. Could you briefly introduce what you sell?
Dusan Village has long grown potatoes in the fertile soil of its highlands. Potatoes grown at high elevation in well-drained soil are known for their fluffy texture and mild flavor. Our potato bread and potato baguettes, made with Danyang potatoes, are hugely popular with visitors.

You upcycle retired paraglider fabric into new products. What inspired this project?
In Danyang alone, as many as 150,000 people try paragliding every year. Nationwide, the number exceeds 200,000. For safe flights, pilots replace their paraglider equipment, especially the canopy, every year. With repeated flights, the gear wears down little by little, and exposure to UV rays and dirt shortens its service life. In the process, hundreds of wings are discarded every year. Disposing of that much waste is no small task, so we began to approach it from a different angle. A canopy that no longer meets flight safety standards, such as air permeability, still has value and beauty. Using them, we started with small pouches and now make a range of lifestyle products, including backpacks and camping chairs.

Which brands have you collaborated with so far, and what products have you made? Are there any collaborations or products that stand out in particular?
The first brand we collaborated with was RAWROW. Its way of looking at travel and the direction it aims for matched Cafe San well, and we were able to produce highly polished results from the very first collection. Since then we have also done a collection every year with Mother Ground. Mother Ground, too, develops sustainable design with an emphasis on leaving ‘good footprints.’*

*Cafe San also steadily carries out projects making bags and lifestyle products from paraglider fabric, collaborating with other brands such as Zerogram and H22.

What does the tourism industry that makes use of the natural environment need in order to coexist harmoniously with nature?
We call ourselves ‘sky farmers.’ Just as a rice farmer waits for the spring rain and prays for a good harvest, we pray that the sky will send us a gift and that we can harvest our flights by following good winds. I believe that flying with a mind that yields to nature is the safest way, and the way we can keep flying for a long time.

Is there a place you’d recommend to visitors to Danyang?
Danyang has many geological sites that carry the marks of time. I’d recommend *Gosu Cave and **Dodamsambong. Dodamsambong is an unmatched spot for feeling a literary charm. Guinsa Temple, about 30 minutes by car from Cafe San, is also one of the places many people visit for its beautiful autumn foliage. I recommend coming to experience the splendid feast of fall colors.

*You can see up close a limestone landscape formed over about 500 million years. It is a geological heritage site of the Danyang UNESCO Global Geopark.
** Three rock peaks rising in the middle of the Namhangang River, and one of the Eight Scenic Views of Danyang.

Could you give us a hint about any projects you’d like to pursue or plans you’re preparing?
I think values like eco-friendliness, upcycling, and giving things a second life are themes too big to be carried by the fashion industry alone. Our big goal is to present a space where the experience expands naturally, so that it goes beyond simple value consumption and becomes a philosophy. Just as people visit the Louvre in Paris or Rome in Italy to meet artists from thousands of years ago, please look forward to the journey of building a museum that holds our own stories someday.