Kia ora speaker themselves. New Zealand's national airline, Air New Zealand, uses "Kia Ora" as the name for its inflight magazine. Water Safety New Zealand, a water safety advocacy organisation, has a specific Māori water safety programme, "Kia Maanu Kia Ora", which makes use of the literal meaning of kia ora, as their message translates as "stay afloat; stay alive". In 1984, at a time when the use of Māori phrases was uncommon in New Zealand, an Auckland telephone operator, Naida Glavish, was instructed to stop using "kia ora" when greeting callers after the post office had received a complaint. She refused
Kia Motors stands for "(East) Asia"), it is roughly translated as "to come out of the east." Kia was founded in December 1944 as Kyungsung Precision Industry, a manufacturer of steel tubing and bicycle parts, eventually producing Korea's first domestic bicycle, the Samchully, in 1951. In 1952, Kyungsung Precision Industry changed its name to Kia Industries, and later built Honda-licensed small motorcycles (starting in 1957), Mazda-licensed trucks (1962) and cars (1974). The company opened its first integrated automotive assembly plant in 1973, the Sohari Plant. Kia built the small Brisa range of cars until 1981, when production came to an end after