“Incorrect string value” when trying to insert UTF-8 into MySQL via JDBC?

Question

This is how my connection is set:
Connection conn = DriverManager.getConnection(url + dbName + \"?useUnicode=true&characterEncoding=utf-8\", userName, password

Answer 1

just do

ALTER TABLE `some_table` 
CHARACTER SET = utf8 , COLLATE = utf8_general_ci ;

ALTER TABLE `some_table` 
CHANGE COLUMN `description_with_latin_or_something` `description` TEXT CHARACTER SET 'utf8' NOT NULL ;