diff --git a/DESCRIPTION b/DESCRIPTION
index 8813dd1..ab8c5b2 100644
--- a/DESCRIPTION
+++ b/DESCRIPTION
@@ -1,7 +1,7 @@
 Package: kableExtra
 Type: Package
 Title: Construct Complex Table with 'kable' and Pipe Syntax
-Version: 1.4.0.2
+Version: 1.4.0.3
 Authors@R: c(
     person('Hao', 'Zhu', email = 'haozhu233@gmail.com', role = c('aut', 'cre'),
     comment = c(ORCID = '0000-0002-3386-6076')),
diff --git a/R/util.R b/R/util.R
index 1ffa01b..1205e14 100644
--- a/R/util.R
+++ b/R/util.R
@@ -304,6 +304,13 @@ line_separator <- function(line, idx_matrix) {
   })))
 }
 
+separator_indices <- function(line) {
+  separator_indices <- which(strsplit(line, '')[[1]] == '|')
+  cell_start_indices <- separator_indices[-length(separator_indices)] + 1
+  cell_end_indices <- separator_indices[-1] - 1
+  matrix(c(cell_start_indices, cell_end_indices), ncol=2)
+}
+
 md_table_parser <- function(md_table) {
   # It seems that if there is a caption, the second row is definitely an empty
   # string
@@ -324,11 +331,7 @@ md_table_parser <- function(md_table) {
   tbody_lines <- md_table[3:length(md_table)]
 
   # Analyze separator line
-  separator_indices <- which(strsplit(separator_line, '')[[1]] == '|')
-  cell_start_indices <- separator_indices[-length(separator_indices)] + 1
-  cell_end_indices <- separator_indices[-1] - 1
-  cell_indices <- matrix(c(cell_start_indices, cell_end_indices), ncol=2)
-
+  cell_indices <- separator_indices(separator_line)
   alignment_raw <- line_separator(separator_line, cell_indices)
   alignment <- sapply(alignment_raw, function(x) {
     if (grepl("^:-+$", x)) 'l' else if (grepl("^:-+:$", x)) 'c' else 'r'
@@ -338,8 +341,14 @@ md_table_parser <- function(md_table) {
   n_rows <- length(tbody_lines)
 
   # thead and tbody
+  # Each line may have different indices if double-width
+  # characters are used (issue #821)
+  cell_indices <- separator_indices(thead_line)
   header_row <- line_separator(thead_line, cell_indices)
-  body_rows <- sapply(tbody_lines, line_separator, cell_indices)
+  body_rows <- sapply(tbody_lines, function(line) {
+    cell_indices <- separator_indices(line)
+    line_separator(line, cell_indices)
+  })
   table_matrix <- matrix(body_rows, ncol = n_cols, byrow = TRUE)
 
   return(kbl(table_matrix, col.names=header_row, align=alignment,
diff --git a/inst/NEWS.md b/inst/NEWS.md
index eba105c..780a186 100644
--- a/inst/NEWS.md
+++ b/inst/NEWS.md
@@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
-kableExtra 1.4.0.2
+kableExtra 1.4.0.3
 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 
 Bug Fixes:
@@ -7,6 +7,8 @@ Bug Fixes:
 that had no header (#812).
 * Fixed a bug in `row_spec()` which added extra 
 line breaks when `extra_latex_after` was specified (#815).
+* Fixed a bug in `kable_styling()` which didn't parse 
+"pipe" tables containing multibyte characters properly (#821).
 
 
 kableExtra 1.4.0