The city is not all frenetic evolution. There are serene oases in its parks and greenways, on the grounds of its centuries-old palaces and in its museums. Ms. Shin asked me to meet her at the Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art. It displays Korean art through the centuries, as well as contemporary works by both Korean artists — like the video-art pioneer Nam June Paik — and international stars like Andreas Gursky and Louise Bourgeois. When we arrived just before opening, an air of tranquillity prevailed.

A small group of us — Ms. Shin, a poet friend of hers, an interpreter and I — followed an English-speaking guide through the Mario Botta-designed wing that houses mostly traditional art. (Other parts of the museum complex were designed by Jean Nouvel and Rem Koolhaas.)

The first piece we saw was an ethereal celadon ewer from the 13th century, decorated in a raised-relief lotus pattern. Beneath a soft spotlight in the darkened room, it looked almost translucent. Under the Goryeo dynasty, which lasted from the 10th to the 14th century, Korean artists adopted the Chinese method of making the glazed, pale-green pottery, then refined the craft to the point that many art historians consider Korean celadon among the finest ever made.

Though a well of knowledge herself, our human guide had also handed us digital ones. Museum audio guides tend to be clunky and overly insistent, but these lightweight, touch-screen paddles invited play. My sleek little machine sensed which object I was looking at and silently presented its image with white-on-black text. Some of the objects could be enlarged and spun around on the screen, allowing me to study curves and texture in minute detail — the next best thing to being able to pick up the items. In front of a 15th-century blue-and-white porcelain jar, I became so absorbed in the digital display that I fell behind the group.

But one specific item was our true destination. It was a foot-and-a-half-tall, white, rotund, 18th-century porcelain vessel called a moon jar. Lit from above, it appeared to float like a heavenly body over its pedestal. A jagged, tea-colored stain cut across the surface like an abstract painter’s flourish, the result of oil once held in the vessel seeping out. Ms. Shin said the jar reminded her variously of a mountain, a pregnant woman or a woman in a hanbok — a voluminous traditional dress — on a windy day.

She visits the jar regularly, she said, and it offers her peace when she is stressed. If Seoul’s manic side pulses through her settings, the jar shapes her work in a different way. “I want to write sentences as beautiful as the moon jar,” she said. “I haven’t done it yet.” She is particularly in love with the oil stain. “The line of the stain shows the flow of time. Humans didn’t make it; only history and nature could.”

Ms. Lee, the fashion designer, invited me to visit her at her showroom in Gangnam, the district made internationally famous after being cheerfully ridiculed by the pop singer Psy. Gangnam has had an exceedingly short modern history — two locals, only half-jokingly, told me that it began in 1988, when the country’s first McDonald’s opened there and became a popular meeting place.