Point of View Seoul: Seongsu’s Calm Stationery Shop

Seoul Culture • Korea Travel • Seongsu • Lifestyle & Slow Living

Seongsu’s most-loved stationery stop is Point of View Seoul, a three-floor design-led shop known for its beautifully curated Korean stationery and calm, gallery-like atmosphere. It is a must-visit if you love pens, paper or simply discovering thoughtful spaces in Seoul.

Point of View Seoul stationery shop interior in Seongsu with neatly arranged stationery and warm light

Point of View Seoul in Seongsu – a three-floor stationery and object store where tools,
paper and small things are treated like quiet art pieces.

Point of View Seoul, where stationery quietly resets your mood

Point of View Seoul shopfront and window display in Seongsu on a quiet side street

From Seongsu Station it is a short walk to this calm corner
where Point of View quietly sits off the main road.

I am the sort of person whose whole day can soften after choosing the right pen. Stickers, stamps, slim notebooks, the kind of tiny things that fit in your palm yet somehow change the texture of a day. If that sentence makes sense to you, Point of View Seoul will feel dangerously comforting.

Every time I am in Seongsu I seem to drift past this shop. At first it was just a quick glance through the windows, the kind you give a place you are slightly afraid of loving too much. This time I went in properly. From exit 4 of Seongsu station it is about a six minute walk. The kind of short stroll where the side streets already start to slow you down.

It was a weekend, but I arrived just after the busy lunch crowd and only waited around ten minutes. Enough time to look at the façade, watch who was going in and out, and let my brain switch from errands mode to wandering mode. The entrance flow is well managed so once you are inside it feels calm rather than crowded.

A few steps in and it becomes obvious why stationery people talk about this place like a small pilgrimage. Each floor feels different. Each corner has its own rhythm. It is less “shopping centre” and more “someone’s well organised mind” translated into space.

Why stationery obsession feels so good

Korean eraser displayed at Point of View Seoul, part of the curated stationery selection

A simple eraser, yet strangely charming
— the kind of everyday tool that feels considered at Point of View.

There is a reason stationery has such a hold on people. Choosing a pen, lining up stickers, filling a page, it looks like simple consumption, but emotionally it is closer to creating a tiny bit of order in your own life.

When the week feels noisy, a notebook gives you a boundary. A narrow, contained space where thoughts do not have to impress anyone, they just have to land. Collecting little things like stamps or memo pads also turns into a kind of memory architecture. One sticker from a trip. A ticket tucked into a diary. Later you look at it and the whole moment comes back. The air, the light, the version of you who bought it.

That is why a place like Point of View does not feel like it “just” sells stationery. It feels more like a quiet studio for people’s inner pace. Somewhere you go to buy tools, but leave with a slightly clearer idea of how you want your days to feel.

The apple I kept noticing, and what it came to mean

Apple motif artwork from Point of View Seoul used as a visual symbol for different perspectives

A simple apple, reinterpreted – one object read differently depending on
who is looking and how they choose to use it.

Before visiting I had once seen a line on POV’s site about how objects never have only one viewpoint. Maybe because of that, the small apples dotted around the store started to bother me in a good way. At first they read as a simple motif. The longer I stayed, the more they felt like a gentle question.

An apple is one of the most ordinary objects you can imagine. Everyone recognises it. Yet if you pay attention it changes constantly. The way it catches the light. How it feels in your hand. The mood you are in when you look at it. A tiny shift in angle creates a completely different impression.

That is how Point of View’s apple started to make sense for me. A pen can be just a tool for one person, a starting point for a novel for another person, and for someone else it is simply a beautiful object on a tidy desk. Same item. Completely different world.

For me, the apple became a reminder that what we call “just stationery” can be an opening if we choose to see it that way. A way of saying that tools are not neutral. They shape how we think and how we remember. Maybe that is why I keep coming back to this shop. It does not tell you what the objects must mean. It quietly lets you decide.

Floor guide: three levels of very controlled temptation

Stairwell and floor guide inside Point of View Seoul showing three levels of the shop

Three floors, three moods
–Archive, Scene and Tools, best explored from the top down.

The staff recommended starting from the top and working down. It is a good idea. The mood shifts floor by floor, and the 3F → 2F → 1F route feels like moving from contemplation to playful chaos in slow motion.

3F — ARCHIVE: the still, quiet room

Third floor Archive area at Point of View Seoul with fountain pens and objects displayed in soft light"

ARCHIVE on 3F feels like someone’s favourite study,
with heavy pens and objects given plenty of breathing room.

The third floor feels like walking into someone’s favourite study. Light comes in softly. Objects have breathing room. Nothing is piled or overwhelming. Here you find things like fountain pens, ink, metal paperweights and sculptural objects that sit somewhere between tool and art.

I tested a Pelikan EF nib and it glided across the paper with that satisfying whisper, smooth but not slippery. The kind of pen that makes even mundane notes feel slightly more considered. This floor is for people who like their inspiration slow and their desks heavy with meaning.

2F — SCENE: the “should I gift this or keep it” zone

Second floor Scene area at Point of View Seoul with colourful stationery and small design objects

SCENE on 2F is the ‘gift or keep’ zone, full of stamps, covers
and small objects that instantly make you think of someone.

The second floor is livelier. Colours, textures and little details pull you in from all directions. It is full of things that instantly make you think of a specific friend, then immediately make you want them for yourself instead.

Here you will find POV’s original stamp line, leather covers, embroidered accessories and small objects that feel like excerpts from someone’s mood board. You can test stamp combinations, which is when your taste accidentally reveals itself. Minimalists stay minimal. Maximalists suddenly cover an entire card in one go.

1F — TOOLS: everyday stationery heaven

Stamp and stationery display on the ground floor of Point of View Seoul

TOOLS on 1F is where time disappears – everyday pens,
planners and stamps that quietly tempt you into reorganising life.

The ground floor is where time disappears. This is the practical layer, full of things you will actually use every day. Pens, mechanical pencils, gel ink, planners, Hobonichi and Traveller’s notebooks, postcards, stickers, tapes, all arranged in a way that encourages slow browsing rather than panic buying.

I ended up with a 0.38 gel pen that writes exactly how my brain thinks, quick but not scratchy, and a weekly planner whose paper feels thin yet somehow resists bleeding even with fountain pen ink. And then there was the thing I did not expect to buy.

On the top floor I had noticed a mobile, a light little sculpture that turns with the air. On the way out I realised I was still thinking about it. So yes, I bought that too. It felt less like décor and more like bringing home a quiet moving reminder to slow down occasionally.

What I took home, and the small shift it made

Hanging mobile sculpture from Point of View Seoul turning gently in the light

A mobile from the top floor that now hangs at home
– a small moving reminder to slow down while I write.

Choosing stationery is a strangely honest act. You can pretend you are buying something “sensible”, but the items in your basket always reveal how you actually want to live. My picks from POV were practical on paper, but they also said, very clearly, “I want my days to feel more intentional than rushed.”

By the time I left, my bag was definitely heavier, but my head felt lighter. There is something quietly therapeutic about walking through a space where every object has been considered. It reminds you that your own time and attention can be curated as carefully.

Point of View Seoul — quick info before you go

Address: 18 Yeonmujang-gil, Seongdong-gu, Seoul
Nearest station: Seongsu Station (Line 2), exit 4, around 6 minutes on foot
Opening hours: Daily 12:00–20:00
Closed: Last Monday of every month (check Instagram for updates)
Best time to visit: Right at opening or after 18:00 on weekends to avoid longer queues
Suggested route: Start on 3F (Archive) → 2F (Scene) → 1F (Tools)
Pair with: Seongsu cafés, Seoul Forest and nearby concept shops for a full slow-travel day

Finishing the day with coffee, a blank page and a small ritual of my own

Open notebook and pen on a café table in Seongsu with a cup of coffee

Finishing the day in a Seongsu café, first blank page open
and ready to hold whatever needs to stay from this visit.

I am writing this final part from a quiet café in Seongsu, the kind with soft light and that low background hum that makes your thoughts feel a little more elegant. My new notebook is open in front of me, its first blank page waiting. Not urgently, more with a patient sort of confidence, as if it already knows it will hold something worth keeping.

I took out the mobile sculpture I bought on the third floor and let it rest beside my cup for a moment. Even off the hook it shifts with the slightest movement of air, a small reminder that I crave this kind of slowness more than I admit. This weekend I will hang it by my window at home so it can turn gently while I write. A private little choreography meant only for me.

People often imagine luxury as something loud and impressive. Mine almost never is. It looks more like this. A pen that moves the way my thoughts do, paper that welcomes whatever I need to say, and a quiet object in the corner that nudges me to breathe a little deeper. These tiny rituals shape the texture of my days far more than anything grand ever could.

Beautifully wrapped stationery boxes and small paper goods displayed at Point of View Seoul, showcasing the shop’s curated selection of artisanal designs and textures.

Gift-ready stationery wrapped in patterned papers, the kind of small treasures
that make Seongsu’s Point of View feel part shop and part curiosity cabinet.

Leaving Point of View, I realised it is not simply a stationery shop. It is a place that hands you back your own tempo. The softer, steadier one you meant to keep all along. Sometimes that is all the luxury a person really needs.