Issue with Agent Corrupting Korean Characters (EUC-KR Encoding) during Auto-Edits

Support Bug Reports
1

Hi team,

I am experiencing an issue with the latest Cursor update where the AI Agent corrupts Korean text when automatically editing files encoded in EUC-KR.

The Problem: When the Agent performs a task or applies a code change to a file that uses EUC-KR encoding, it seems to process the text as UTF-8 by default. This results in all Korean characters being broken (encoding artifacts/mojibake) once the file is saved by the Agent.

Steps to Reproduce:

  1. Open a project containing files with EUC-KR encoding.

  2. Use the Cursor Agent (Composer or Chat) to make a change to one of these files.

  3. Apply the changes.

  4. The Korean strings in the file become unreadable/corrupted.

Request:

  • Is there a way to force the Agent to respect the existing file encoding?

  • Does Cursor have a setting to prioritize files.autoGuessEncoding for the AI Agent’s write operations?

Currently, the only workaround is manually converting every file to UTF-8, which isn’t always feasible for legacy projects. Any guidance or a fix for this would be greatly appreciated.

Environment:

  • Cursor Version: [2.4.21] , VSCode Version: [1.105.1]

  • OS: [Windows 11]

Cursor returns UTF-8 code despite Windows-1252 configuration
AI edits corrupt non-UTF-8 characters (€ symbol becomes ? in Windows-1252 files)
2

Hi there!

We detected that this may be a bug report, so we’ve moved your post to the Bug Reports category.

To help us investigate and fix this faster, could you edit your original post to include the details from the template below?

Bug Report Template - Click to expand

Where does the bug appear (feature/product)?

  • Cursor IDE
  • Cursor CLI
  • Background Agent (GitHub, Slack, Web, Linear)
  • BugBot
  • Somewhere else…

Describe the Bug
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Steps to Reproduce
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  1. …
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Expected Behavior
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Operating System

  • Windows 10/11
  • MacOS
  • Linux

Version Information

  • For Cursor IDE: Menu → About Cursor → Copy
  • For Cursor CLI: Run agent about in your terminal
IDE:
Version: 2.xx.x
VSCode Version: 1.105.1
Commit: ......

CLI:
CLI Version 2026.01.17-d239e66

For AI issues: which model did you use?
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Request ID: f9a7046a-279b-47e5-ab48-6e8dc12daba1
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Additional Information
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Does this stop you from using Cursor?

  • Yes - Cursor is unusable
  • Sometimes - I can sometimes use Cursor
  • No - Cursor works, but with this issue

The more details you provide, the easier it is for us to reproduce and fix the issue. Thanks!

4

Since the issue persisted in the latest update, I have taken the following steps to restore functionality:

Uninstalled Cursor version (latest).

Downloaded and Reinstalled version 2.3.41 from https://cursor.com/download.

Disabled auto-updates to stay on the working version.

5

Hey, thanks for the report. This is a known issue: Agent ignores the file’s original encoding and always saves as UTF-8.

Related threads: Encoding changing when editing EUC-KR files (same EUC-KR), Cursor returns UTF-8 code despite Windows-1252 configuration (Windows-1252), https://forum.com/t/149887 (GB2312). The bug affects different non-UTF-8 encodings on 2.4.x.

Downgrading to 2.3.41 is the right call if you need stable behavior right now. A few users confirmed the issue doesn’t happen on 2.3.x.

When you’re ready to switch back to the newer version, here’s a temporary workaround:

  • After Agent edits the file: bottom-right corner in the editor → click the encoding → “Reopen with Encoding” → EUC-KR
  • Then “Save with Encoding” → EUC-KR
  • Or try CTRL+K (inline edit) instead of Agent. It may break encoding less, but it’s not guaranteed

The team is aware. Your report helps raise the priority. Let me know if you need anything else.

6

I’m having the same problem. Is there any estimate of when the new versions of Cursor will fix this issue?