"Auckland may be the first stop, but other migrants seek a new life beyond the bright lights. Alex Kim has watched Whangareo's Korean population grow from 7 families in 1995 to around 270 people now. He chose New Zealand because Australia was too big, Canada too cold and the Korean migrant community in the US, where he'd studied, too insular - and, says the former fashion-house marketing manager "because I wanted to enjoy my life."
His friend Sek-Hyun Nam says tension on the Korean peninsula was so normal that he wasn't looking for a safe haven. Instead, he and his wife resolved to leave because of Korea's ultra-competitve education system - like so many migrants, they moved for their children. Here, while Nam runs his grocery store, his 4 year old son Yoon-Hwan, who now goes by his NZ name "Tony", has some of his kindergarten lessons outside and is encouraged to be creative. We're very happy with that," says Nam. "I want to let him become a real Kiwi."
An hour's drive to the north,
Frenchman Arnault Kindt says he was living in Jakarta 2 years ago when his Kiwi tennis partner persuaded him to take a 4 day break in New Zealand. On the plane home, he and his fiancee talked about moving there. "I'd been looking for a place toi plant some roots and I had a very strong feeling that this was the place," Kindt said. "It was a big, shining opportunity saying "come here". 3 months later they returned and bought the Duke of Marlborough, a historic hotel on the waterfront at Russell, a holiday village of 900 in the North Island's famous Bay of Islands. Now in the middle of renovations, Kindt says that in Asia, where he managed a series of large hotels, the stress and pollution became unbearable. "It was really nice to come to a counry where you can breathe." Just as refreshing is the local attitude.
"It's so wonderful to find simplicity - and there is nothing pejorative in this - in relationships.
If you invite someone to dinner, you mean it. If you don't like someone, you tell them. "
NZ still rates below the US, Canada and Australia for those wanting to migrate for business reasons, says Professor Richard Bedford, convenor of Waikato University's Migration Research Group. "We're not a mecca for 1000s of people looking for business opportunities," he says. "We attract a lot of people who are interested in lifestyle." But though the pace is slower, Kindt says, moving to New Zealand isn't about early retirement. "This place is full of business opportunities - there are many things, for example, in tourism, that have been done elsewhere but not here," he says. "It's one of the most beautiful moves I have made in my life."
Lifestyle is NZ's big drawcard, says Matt Hoskin, marketing manager for Venture Southland, which in the past year has organized for 31 families - mainly from South Africa and the UK - to relocate to Invercargill, at the bottom of the South Island, where shortages of skilled workers prompted an international recruiting campaign.
"South African families can't believe you can let your children walk to school," says Hoskin. It's those elements, he says, which have made NZ so popular that "in the last couple of years the country has struggled to cope with the sheer demand".
So good is its image that migrants like
Danish couple Ove and Anne Kjaer are willing to leave everything behind to move to a place they've never seen. "We got fed up with the negativity of Europe," says Anne of their move in 2000. "People were forever complaining, no matter how well off they were." They put their saving into buying a home nestled in bush and overlooking the sea above Whangarei, where they now run the Totaranui Bed and Breakfast.
http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~ovekjaer/page2.html
They have no family here, and moving has been financially tough. But the benefits - the natural beauty and greater sense of personal freedom - have won them over. "It doesn't get better than this," says Anne.