This variable specifies the character set that the runtime should use when mapping Java strings or PIC X data items containing characters outside of the ISO-8859-1 range. The default setting is IS0-8859-1. If you have data outside the IS0-8859-1 range (e.g.an umlaut or Euro symbol) specify a different character set that contains those characters.
Be aware of a common misconception that ISO-8859-1 is equivalent to Windows-1252. This is mostly true, but there are characters in the range 0x80 - 0x9F that differ. Windows-1252 uses these numbers for letters and punctuation while the ISO-8859-1 uses these for control codes.