mysqldump -uUSERNAME -pPASSWORD --default-character-set=utf8 DATABASE > backup.sqlWhen you import backup into an empty MySQL database, you can set the exact character set for the data that will be inserted. To do this, use the following command:
mysql -uUSERNAME -pPASSWORD --default-character-set=utf8 DATABASE < backup.sqlReplace –default-character-set=utf8 with the charset used for the creation of the backup.sql file. This will ensure that your data is inserted correctly.
character-set UTF8 vs UTF8MB4
MySQL utf8 is a propiatary standard from MySQL which does not reflect the real utf-8 standard. It uses only max. 3 bytes for a character. If you want to use real utf8 in your database you should use utf8mb4.