I use perl -C (or sets the shell environment variabel PERL_UNICODE=""), and then you do not need any utf8 specific parameter in the code unless the column (or table) names are non-ascii. If they are, mysql_enable_utf8 => 1 have to be set. 
$dbh = DBI->connect($dsn, $username, $password, {mysql_enable_utf8 => 
+1}) || die "Could not connect to $database: $DBI::errstr";
$sth->execute || die "Could not execute statement: ".$sth->errstr."\n"
+;
$sth = $dbh->prepare("select foo from bar where id = '3064'") || die "
+Could not prepare statement: ".$dbh->errstr."\n";
my $string = $sth->fetchrow_array;

print $string . "\n";

[download]
Will print utf8 to STDOUT.

In reply to Re^2: A UTF8 round trip with MySQL by Anonymous Monk
in thread A UTF8 round trip with MySQL by clinton

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