There's too little context, but that's looks like invalid connection encoding was used to input the data or is skipped when connecting. Normally, before you work with UTF8 DB, you should call 'SET NAMES utf8' query (this is done automatically by eZ Publish db libs, I believe). When you establish your own connection and send query, it's most probably latin encoding by default, which is why your data seems fine.
Hint: use PHPMyAdmin, choose any UTF-8-like language and utf8_general_ci collation (just in case) and look at the data.
PS. Also, not sure if those references are needed there...
When using eZDB::instance(), there should be no need anymore to do a "SET NAMES ..." because it's done by the mysql database plugin IF your eZ Publish site is correctly configured (in i18n.ini, [CharacterSettings] Charset=utf-8 and in site.ini [DatabaseSettings] Charset= ). In case you're using mysqli, there's a special function used to set the connection's character set: mysqli_set_charset(...). But in either way, it should be automatically done for you when using eZDB::instance().
