Hello User,

I actually found the solution to this issue and it partially related to what you suggested.

Initially I did try the UseUnicodeSqlCharacterTypes=1 but that did not make a difference.

Ultimately I realized that the issue was with the JAVA system properties as you also suggested.

I had to update 2 properties:

file.encoding (like you suggested)

sun.jnu.encoding

Once I set both of those to UTF-8, everything was good.