Asian languages

To add Asian languages to the wp posts, it is best to go to phpMyAdmin and change the relevant tables to read utf8_unicode_ci.
I have got this work in my first wp site, but I’m having trouble with the second site.
In the first site I did not change the config file and I don’t want to do that because it is changing a wp file. I tried it though, and it still didn’t work.
There must be something that I have forgotten to do, but I can’t pick it. I’ve even installed a 3rd version of wp, no plugins or any thing, and I can’t get the characters to work in that either.
Can anyone please think of something that I can’t?