Strange - KDE konsole can't handle LANG=en_US.UTF-8

[B Wooster]

I am struggling with a strange problem - when I start "konsole" from
the KDE panel (or by typing konsole in "Run Command" window), the bash
session cannot display single/double quotes and grave accents
correctly - they are garbled.

Then I type konsole at the bash prompt, this brings up a new konsole,
and now all those characters display correctly!

So, the first konsole started by KDE garbles characters, I then start
another konsole from inside the first konsole, and characters are ok.

I looked at all environment variables in the first and second konsole,
they are same (except for things like PID, SHLVL, etc).
Both have LANG=en_US.UTF-8.

I looked at konsole configuration, both konsoles have exactly similar
config, tried changing Font to Unicode, <Default> etc - no luck. First
console always displays some characters wrong, second one is always
correct.

Using latest Fedora: 2.6.10-1.741_FC3