But it's precisely the proximity of this unpredictable neighbor that makes South Korea's accomplishments so remarkable. Somehow, while the world's attention was focused on the North, it managed to transform itself into a magnet for Asian tourists: Japanese, Taiwanese, and Chinese from Hong Kong flock to Seoul in droves, drawn by the huge popularity of South Korean movies and TV series and the city's newly cool neighborhoods, restaurants, galleries, and shops. While the West eyed Pyongyang, Seoul was busy transforming itself into a fully formed modern city, the next destination for Asian culture–seekers.

For the past few years, I've been watching this transformation. I am a journalist living in Tokyo, and my work often takes me to South Korea. On one recent trip, I went to see the Leeum, the new Samsung-sponsored art museum in Itaewon, a district most famous for its strip of duty-free shops and for once being the favorite hangout of some of the 37,000 American GIs stationed in South Korea. Beyond Itaewon's commercial zone is a residential neighborhood with some of the city's most expensive houses, and it is here that one finds the Leeum. It was a rainy afternoon, and as I trudged uphill toward the museum, its three distinct structures came into view from beneath my umbrella: a fortresslike terra-cotta–tiled building in the shape of an upside-down cone, designed by Mario Botta; an austere, sharp-angled edifice of glass and rusted-charcoal stainless steel, by Jean Nouvel; and Rem Koolhaas's airy glass cube, inside of which is the Black Box, a windowless space housing temporary exhibits.

After I took in Samsung's collections—lingering by the tenth-century celadon vases and the Buddhist art from the artistically rich Goryeo dynasty, which lasted from the tenth through the fourteenth centuries—I went to see Hong Ra Young, the museum's forty-six-year-old deputy director. She was tickled, she told me, by the museum's location in Itaewon, especially the contrast between the "kitsch" sold in the neighborhood stores and the "high art" on display in the Leeum. Other people were, too, it seemed: The museum attracted so many visitors that it had to implement an appointment-only policy. This interest in art, especially new art, was another recent development, driven by Koreans in their thirties and forties. "They have a New York–like lifestyle," Hong Ra Young said. "They like dining out and drinking good wine. They go to galleries."

And in fact, the city's homegrown art scene has never been livelier. In Samcheong-dong—a relaxed, tree-lined neighborhood in the center of the old part of the city, near the Blue House, South Korea's White House—dozens of galleries are tucked among Seoul's largest concentration of hanoks. Many of these traditional prewar wooden houses with elegant curved roofs have been converted into teahouses and cafés.

If Samcheong-dong is the place for South Korea's established art community, Hongdae, an area west of downtown, is its incubator. Here, at galleries like the multidisciplinary Ssamzie Space, are exhibitions of work by emerging conceptual artists. At Alternative Space Loop, which recently moved into a large four-story building, I saw a group show called "Bitmap," a collection of digitally manipulated photographs by Asian artists. One image, by a Pakistani artist named Rashid Rana, consisted of a burka that, upon closer inspection, revealed itself to be made of countless tiny images of people coupling. Korean artists began participating in international art fairs during the early 1990s; since then, figures such as photographers Atta Kim and Boochang Koo and conceptual artists Kimsooja and Do-Ho Suh have become established names.