diff --git a/lib/chunks/chunk.rb b/lib/chunks/chunk.rb
index 9b32d55f..c1a8e2ac 100644
--- a/lib/chunks/chunk.rb
+++ b/lib/chunks/chunk.rb
@@ -11,7 +11,7 @@ module Chunk
 
 # Rails's default utf-8 support causes problems here. So, for Chunk::Abstract class, turn off
 # multibyte character support.
-    $KCODE = 'n'
+    $KCODE = 'n' unless ''.respond_to?(:force_encoding)
 
     # automatically construct the array of derivatives of Chunk::Abstract
     @derivatives = [] 
diff --git a/lib/chunks/wiki.rb b/lib/chunks/wiki.rb
index e7d5ddaa..16821489 100644
--- a/lib/chunks/wiki.rb
+++ b/lib/chunks/wiki.rb
@@ -71,7 +71,9 @@ module WikiChunk
     attr_reader :escaped_text
 
     unless defined? WIKI_WORD
-      WIKI_WORD = Regexp.new('(":)?(\\\\)?(' + WikiWords::WIKI_WORD_PATTERN + ')\b', 0, 'u')
+      WIKI_WORD = ''.respond_to?(:force_encoding) ? 
+            Regexp.new('(":)?(\\\\)?(' + WikiWords::WIKI_WORD_PATTERN + ')\b', 0) :
+            Regexp.new('(":)?(\\\\)?(' + WikiWords::WIKI_WORD_PATTERN + ')\b', 0, 'u')
     end
 
     def self.pattern