Observers have called Azia Kim everything from an imposter with some serious baggage to a post-modern anti-hero.

Only the 18-year-old high school graduate knows what she is and why she posed as a Stanford University freshman for eight months — a ruse that garnered national attention and lit up Internet blogs and discussion boards when the story first broke in late May.

But Kim, one month after her deception was uncovered, has yet to speak publicly about her motivations.

Family members declined to comment on the matter. Kim did not respond to calls made to her cell phone.

Stanford officials said that Kim posed a “serious breach of security.” Others, particularly students, reacted with both shock and amusement.

“I guess I was in disbelief, but at the same time, I understood, coming from the same [high] school,” said Angela Pham, 19, a former classmate of Kim’s at Troy High School in Fullerton, Calif. “It’s a very competitive environment. I felt more compassion.”

Some friends of Kim’s have speculated that her actions may have been tied to pressure she felt from her parents to attend a school of Stanford caliber. Pham said Kim — whom she described as a studious, magnet student at Troy High — likely felt peer pressure, too, as a graduate of one of the region’s most competitive high schools.

Troy High attracts top-notch students from more than 100 junior high schools in Orange, Los Angeles, San Bernardino and Riverside counties. Known for its magnet program, the high school has about 2,500 students. Last year, 72 percent of its seniors were accepted to four-year colleges. About 38 percent of the student population is of Asian descent, including “parachute” students — those who were sent to the school from other countries, including South Korea.

“Throughout high school, your main goal is getting into a good college, and that’s very clear [from] the very beginning,” said Pham, who attends New York University. “There’s a goal you have to reach.

“I hope [Kim] gets a book deal or movie deal out of it,” she added.

The Stanford Daily, a campus newspaper, broke the story about Kim on May 26, reporting that her deception started last fall when she persuaded two sophomores to let her stay in their dorm room. She told the women she was temporarily out of housing because of a technical mix-up and ended up bunking with them or staying in a dorm lounge from last September to April of this year.

At Stanford, the campus paper reported, Kim, who told friends she was majoring in human biology, had no campus ID and no dorm key, so she would enter her room through a window. During the spring, Kim moved into a different dormitory after she learned that there was a vacancy.
Stanford students who were acquainted with Kim say she went so far as to buy textbooks for classes she was not enrolled in and even knew the test schedule for these classes.