diff --git a/CHANGELOG.md b/CHANGELOG.md
index 435d8bc4f..9eed888b4 100644
--- a/CHANGELOG.md
+++ b/CHANGELOG.md
@@ -7,6 +7,7 @@ Inspired from [Keep a Changelog](https://keepachangelog.com/en/1.0.0/)
 ### Deprecated
 ### Removed
 ### Fixed
+- Fixed the response body being force-encoded when it was already in UTF-8 ([#212](https://github.com/opensearch-project/opensearch-ruby/issues/212))
 ### Security
 
 ## [3.0.1]
diff --git a/lib/opensearch/transport/transport/response.rb b/lib/opensearch/transport/transport/response.rb
index 69a71d10f..0759f6120 100644
--- a/lib/opensearch/transport/transport/response.rb
+++ b/lib/opensearch/transport/transport/response.rb
@@ -39,7 +39,7 @@ def initialize(status, body, headers = {})
           @status = status
           @body = body
           @headers = headers
-          @body = body.force_encoding('UTF-8') if body.respond_to?(:force_encoding)
+          @body = body.force_encoding('UTF-8') if body.respond_to?(:force_encoding) && body.encoding != Encoding::UTF_8
         end
       end
     end
diff --git a/test/transport/unit/response_test.rb b/test/transport/unit/response_test.rb
index a71246e85..060db4bfe 100644
--- a/test/transport/unit/response_test.rb
+++ b/test/transport/unit/response_test.rb
@@ -28,8 +28,7 @@
 
 class OpenSearch::Transport::Transport::ResponseTest < Minitest::Test
   context "Response" do
-
-    should "force-encode the body into UTF" do
+    should "force-encode the body into UTF-8" do
       body = "Hello Encoding!".encode(Encoding::ISO_8859_1)
       assert_equal 'ISO-8859-1', body.encoding.name
 
@@ -37,5 +36,11 @@ class OpenSearch::Transport::Transport::ResponseTest < Minitest::Test
       assert_equal 'UTF-8', response.body.encoding.name
     end
 
+    should "not force-encode the body if it is already encoded as UTF-8" do
+      body = "Hello Frozen!".freeze
+      response = OpenSearch::Transport::Transport::Response.new 200, body
+
+      assert_equal body, response.body
+    end
   end
 end