another seemingly simple encoding question

maybe a routine question here ... .... i hope i can understand the
answer.

[postgres(at)www ~]$ pg_ctl --version
pg_ctl (PostgreSQL) 8.0.0beta3
[postgres(at)www ~]$

i have a problem matching a utf8 string with a field in a database
encoded in utf8.
i read the documentation, checked the following, and don't know where i
went astray, trying to match ...
1) i am almost 100% sure the data is correctly utf8. i just dumped and
loaded into postgres.
2)
utf8db -> \l
List of databases
Name | Owner | Encoding
--------------+----------+-----------
utf8db | postgres | UNICODE
3) postgresql.conf

# These settings are initialized by initdb -- they might be changed
lc_messages = 'en_US.utf8' # locale for system error
message strings
lc_monetary = 'en_US.utf8' # locale for monetary formatting
lc_numeric = 'en_US.utf8' # locale for number formatting
lc_time = 'en_US.utf8' # locale for time formatting

# - Other Defaults -

4) set client encoding in client (psql or php, either one, both same
mismatch)

LOG: statement: select wordid,word from korean_english where word='기르
다' limit 10;
LOG: statement: show client_encoding;
LOG: statement: set client_encoding to 'utf8';
LOG: statement: select wordid,word from korean_english where word='기르
다' limit 10;
LOG: statement: show client_encoding;

5) locale -a | grep en
<snip>
en_US.utf8
</snip>

ohhh, where is my mistake, please!