diff --git a/R/KorAPCorpusStats.R b/R/KorAPCorpusStats.R
index 8d9545a..8c4ad47 100644
--- a/R/KorAPCorpusStats.R
+++ b/R/KorAPCorpusStats.R
@@ -44,7 +44,7 @@
     url <-
       paste0(kco@apiUrl,
              'statistics?cq=',
-             URLencode(vc, reserved = TRUE))
+             URLencode(enc2utf8(vc), reserved = TRUE))
     log.info(verbose, "Getting size of virtual corpus \"", vc, "\"", sep = "")
     res <- apiCall(kco, url)
     log.info(verbose, ": ", res$tokens, " tokens\n")
diff --git a/R/KorAPQuery.R b/R/KorAPQuery.R
index 230eb24..0b07106 100644
--- a/R/KorAPQuery.R
+++ b/R/KorAPQuery.R
@@ -168,8 +168,8 @@
       }
       request <-
         paste0('?q=',
-               URLencode(query, reserved = TRUE),
-               if (vc != '') paste0('&cq=', URLencode(vc, reserved = TRUE)) else '', '&ql=', ql)
+               URLencode(enc2utf8(query), reserved = TRUE),
+               if (vc != '') paste0('&cq=', URLencode(enc2utf8(vc), reserved = TRUE)) else '', '&ql=', ql)
       webUIRequestUrl <- paste0(kco@KorAPUrl, request)
       requestUrl <- paste0(
         kco@apiUrl,