MySql: weird string support

[kwaazaar]

I have a teststring I add to a table in MySql running on Linux (Amazon RDS). The value I add is this:
ŻŹŶŴŲŰŮŬŪŨŦŤŢŠŞŜŚŘŖŔŐŎŌŊŇŅŃŁĿĽĻĹĶĴĮĬĪĨĦĤĢĠĞĜĚĘĖĔĒĐĎČĊĈĆĄĂĀŸÝÜÛÚÙØÖÕÔÓÒÑÏÎÍÌËÊÉÈÇÅÄÃÂ

When I use Workbench to check the stored data, the data has been modified (especially the first chars have changed):
ZZYWUUUUUUTTTŠSSSRRROOO?NNNL?LLLKJIIIIHHGGGGEEEEEÐDCCCCAAAŸÝÜÛÚÙØÖÕÔÓÒÑÏÎÍÌËÊÉÈÇÅÄÃÂ

When using Workbench itself to add the above string, everything works great, so my table/column definition is fine (utf8). It's not clear to me what I should do to make this work with. It this a problem with ADO.NET, eg do I need a special connectionstring? Or am I using Dapper wrong? The exact same code works fine on MS Sql Server. I also cannot find a Dapper unittest that checks such strings.

I just found out that the code works fine for MySql on Windows, so it's a MySql on Linux thing. Nevertheless, since it works fine from inside Workbench, why doesn't it from code?

[kwaazaar]

Ok, after some more experimenting, I just found out this has to do with the database connection itself. I need to use the CharSet=utf8; connectionstring option for this to work on Linux machines.