NYAPI

A nickname inherited from an unmarked venue

In the Itaewon of the eighties, ffan's father, Lee Jin, ran an unnamed dance spot: it couldn't open at dawn, so the place circulated without a sign until people called it a night refuge. In Korean, 야간피난소, nyagan pinanso. From that nickname comes NYAPI, the short form with which Daewon, Juheum, and ffan—the latter at the helm of Studio Namsan—opened the third floor of 187 Itaewon-ro on August 5, 2022, above The Halal Guys. The opening night got out of hand: the club filled up, the drinks ran out in three hours, and the smoke machine triggered the fire alarm.

Magenta, cyan, and a club that remains bright

The founders arrived obsessed with CMY color theory—cyan, magenta, and yellow—and painted the venue pink without half-measures. The dance floor and bar were left in magenta, the room on the right in cyan, and the lighting in yellow: mixed, the three make black, but the club had to remain bright. From the street, that pink peeks out behind wavy glass. The logo, posters, and identity were signed by Hugo Capablanca, with total freedom and a manual stroke that has remained as the venue's brand. Among the references with which they imagined it were Oppa-la and Zodiac, Asian clubs chosen for their willingness to take risks.

A Dance Stack under a low ceiling

The sound was born from a sale: ffan got rid of the equipment he had at home to buy a second-hand Funktion-One, one of those that appeared when the pandemic left large clubs closed. They were looking for a space on the scale of those boxes. The large venue fell through at the last moment, and the ceiling of the one they found was too low for a bass setup. What has been installed since the first day is a Dance Stack 2, maintained by Dr. Kyper and Ms. Lee. The DJ booth is spacious, there is a disco ball over the dance floor, and on the rooftop, takeovers like the Morsecode weekend in October 2025 have used the exterior as a second dance floor.

Home of the Free

The club's motto is Home of the Free: programming without reducing the night to a single genre and ensuring that whoever enters feels no pressure. The dance floor has hosted house, disco, and techno with wide margins. For Chida, it is the only club abroad where he regularly DJs from start to finish: sets that start at 80 BPM, between slow techno and cosmic disco, and end at 160, in drum & bass. The booth has seen the likes of Roi Perez, Nicola Cruz, Odopt, Kaito, Telephones, or Interstellar Funk, and the club has hosted parties like Cha Cha Mambo, Dubplate, Monkey Business, or the Studio Namsan series. In September 2026, upon turning four, the anniversary weekend brought together part of that family, including Jonathan Kusuma, founder of Zodiac Jakarta.