The afterparty is where the real music gets played. It is where the DJ plays not for the room, but for the moment.
The afterparty is not a glamorous concept. It is a practical one. The main club closes at 5am or 6am. A significant crowd of people is not ready to go home. They have been dancing for eight hours. They have nowhere to be tomorrow. They have momentum. The response is to move somewhere else: an apartment, a warehouse, a private club that operates without licensing, a beach or a field if the weather permits.
The Berghain model is different. The club itself runs continuously from Friday night through Monday morning. There is no afterparty because there is no closing. The music changes as the night extends. A DJ playing from 2am to 6am is not playing for the same floor as a DJ playing from 11pm to 1am. The floor has changed. The people still dancing at 6am have a different tolerance, a different intention, a different relationship to the music.
Seoul has a legal closing time of 5am, though enforcement is inconsistent. When the legal clubs close, people who want to continue migrate to private venues operated more or less underground, where music can continue through the morning and into the afternoon. The afterparty venues have different economics, different risk profiles, different cultural functions. They are not trying to be clubs. They are trying to be extensions of the night.
The music that gets played after 6am is different. The DJ is playing for fewer people, playing more slowly, playing more obscure records. The social transaction at an afterparty is different from the social transaction at a main-stage set. There is less performance and more conversation. The DJ and the dancers are in the same space in a more literal way. The music is chosen for the specific people in the room, not for an imagined general audience.
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