In the years that intervened Hae Ja came to the United States and was mainly involved in raising a family keeping her hand in the occasional portrait. In 1989, Hae Ja and her husband moved to Invercargill, New Zealand. There Hae Ja studied under noted Southland artists Lyn Johnston and Pat Hall. She is winner of the 1991 Fay Good Scholarship awarded by the New Zealand Porcelain Artists Association.

     While in New Zealand, Hae Ja was an "artist member" of the Southland Art Society, and has exhibited her works at the Southland Museum in Invercargill, the Queens Gallery in Queenstown, N.Z., and McKillop's Art Gallery in Invercargill.

     She and her husband lived for a time in Halifax, Nova Scotia, where Hae Ja's paintings were available through the Art Sales and Rental Society associated with the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia. Hae Ja now paints from her home in Citrus Springs, FL, while assisting her husband who is the pastor of Grace Baptist Church.