Sarah Chew covers Southeast Asia’s technology, fintech, digital policy, and AI adoption landscape for RECATOOLS. Her work focuses on how regulation, platform shifts, and emerging technologies affect businesses, consumers, and digital markets across Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, and the Philippines.

129
Articles
ASEAN Tech
Primary beat
May 2026
Writing since
~915 min
Total reading
All 129 ASEAN Tech 71 Finance 51 Business 4 AI & ML 3

Articles Showing 41–50 of 129

White Hangul letters scattered and overlapping across a dark textured surface.
ASEAN Tech

Korea's romanisation rules never covered surnames

Apply the official standard to the four commonest Korean surnames and you get Gim, I, Bak and Choe. Passports say Kim, Lee, Park and Choi. Surnames are not exceptions to the rule — they were left outside it, and the rule meant to cover them was drafted twice and never issued.

1 Sep 2026 · 6 min read
An open passport held up to the light, its visa pages covered in overlapping inked entry and exit stamps.
ASEAN Tech

What passports do when you have only one name

The near-universal advice is to write FNU in the empty given-name box. That is not an ICAO rule. The standard says a name that cannot be divided goes in the primary field, whole — and it never mentions FNU at all.

1 Sep 2026 · 6 min read
A robot lawn mower parked on cut grass beside a flower border
ASEAN Tech

The US Robot Ban Exempts Everything Already Approved

Every model authorised before 28 July keeps selling, so the American shelf does not empty. And the content rule names US assembly, which closes the usual relocation answer.

1 Sep 2026 · 7 min read
Trays of Chinese movable type beside a freshly printed page
ASEAN Tech

The Chinese characters a bank computer cannot store

A rare character in a legal name fails in four different ways that look identical from the counter. One of them does not refuse the name at all — it silently stores a different one.

31 Aug 2026 · 5 min read
A printed form and a pen lying on a wooden desk
ASEAN Tech

What a country will let you name a child

A name generator hands you something that sounds right; a registrar decides whether it can be recorded. Japan now registers how a name is pronounced, and may ask for published evidence that your reading exists.

31 Aug 2026 · 6 min read
A single mobile telephone mast standing on a grassy hill against a clear blue sky
ASEAN Tech

Viettel Won Dominican Spectrum. It Has Not Built Anything Yet.

The award is 240 MHz across three bands for twenty years, which is a serious national allocation. It is also a regulator's resolution, and no network exists.

31 Aug 2026 · 6 min read
A tall stack of hardback books against a plain white background
ASEAN Tech

Vietnam Will Teach AI in Every Grade. The Compulsory Core Is 12 Periods.

Every grade, 50,000 institutions, 27 million students. Then read the allocation: 12 periods a year, which is roughly one lesson every three weeks, with no published teacher training provision.

31 Aug 2026 · 6 min read
The objective lens of a laboratory microscope lowered over an illuminated slide
Finance

Pasqal's First-Day Gain Was Reported at 40%, 43%, 52% and 95%

Four outlets reported four different first-day gains, and all four are correct. The figure that does not depend on which minute you looked is the cash.

31 Aug 2026 · 6 min read
Shipping containers stacked in a grid, viewed head-on at their doors
ASEAN Tech

The Planned US Chip Tariffs Would Tax Assembled Laptops and Servers, Not Just Chips

A tariff on semiconductors sounds like a tax on wafers. The plans reported this week reach the finished laptop, phone and server, which is where the ASEAN assembly economies actually sit.

30 Aug 2026 · 6 min read
Nvidia graphics cards, shown here as consumer models, illustrating the accelerator category this debt is raised against
Finance

Lambda Borrowed $1bn for Nvidia Chips, Which Nvidia Is Reported to Lease Back

Short-dated private debt arranged by JPMorgan, for accelerators leased to Microsoft, from a company Nvidia backs and from which Nvidia is reported to rent GPUs. The loop now passes through a lender.

30 Aug 2026 · 6 min read
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