I also ran into this problem. I don't believe that Stephen's patch is the best way to go, because resetting the terminal can remove various glitches (like the effects of a flash attack).
I did come up with a simple workaround, though. In the issue file
displayed by mingetty (/etc/issue by default), insert at the beginning
the following sequence:
ESC%G
(Replace "ESC" with a literal escape character. In nano, this can be done
by pressing Alt-V and then pressing the Esc key.)
This way, all virtual consoles managed by mingetty will be in UTF-8 mode
by default. Mingetty resets the VC, but then prints the issue file, which
contains that escape sequence to set UTF-8 mode.
It would be preferable for mingetty to do something equivalent to
vt-is-UTF8 before resetting the console, and, if it was in UTF-8 mode
prior to resetting, print the ESC%G sequence after resetting to preserve
UTF-8 mode.
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