How to correct character encoding in IE8 native json?

Question

I am using json with unicode text, and am having a problem with the IE8 native json implementation.

<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />  
<script>
    var stringified = JSON.stringify("สวัสดี olé");
    alert(stringified);
</script>

Using json2.js or FireFox native json, the alert() string is the same as in the original one. IE8 on the other hand returns Unicode values rather than the original text \u0e2a\u0e27\u0e31\u0e2a\u0e14\u0e35 ol\u00e9 . Is there an easy way to make IE behave like the others, or convert this string to how it should be ? And would you regard this as a bug in IE, I thought native json implementations were supposed to be drop-in identical replacements for json2.js ?

Edit: An repro on jsfiddle using the above code - http://jsfiddle.net/vV4uz/

Answer 1

To answer my own question - Apparently this is not natively possible in IE8, but it does work correctly in the IE9 Beta.

A fix is possible though:

<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />  
<script>
    var stringified = JSON.stringify("สวัสดี olé");
    stringified  = unescape(stringified.replace(/\\u/g, '%u'));
    alert(stringified);
</script>

Which will correctly alert() back the original string on all of IE, FF and Chrome.