Kim Jong Hyun, a Seoul software programmer, is looking to invest $1 million not in houses for rent in South Korea, but in a four- bedroom house with three-car garage and swimming pool — in New Jersey.

That sum would buy only a three- bedroom apartment in the South Korean capital, where real estate prices hit a four-year high in 2006. The United States gives him "a better quality, more spacious house," said Kim, 32.

Kim, who is married, says he has no immediate plans to move and is buying as an investment. He is shopping through Rootiz Korea, a Seoul firm specializing in property.

South Koreans spent $780 million on real estate abroad in 2006, a sum 34 times greater than in the previous year, and almost half of it was in the United States Most people bought houses rather than commercial property, according to the central bank.

The surge followed the relaxation in May of controls imposed during the 1997-1998 Asian financial crisis. This year, the Finance Ministry tripled the maximum that individuals could spend on overseas investment properties to $3 million.