Image Import leaves tags behind

My usual workflow for adding photos to my collection is to import them 
from my device into a temporary working folder, go through them and add 
tags to them, then import from that folder into my main library.  I've 
been doing this using digikam since I started using more than a decade ago.

At some point I realized that writing the tags to the images was slowing 
me down a lot, so I decided not to write metadata to the images and 
instead just let it live in the database. This sped things up 
considerably and everything worked as expected.  When I would import the 
images from my temporary working folder into my main library, the tags 
would be imported along with the images. This has worked well for years 
and through many versions of digikam.  This is was working as recently 
as January of 2025.

However, my most recent attempt to import images from my working folder 
into my library resulted in zero tags being imported.  In the import 
window, I don't see any tags on the images.  They are present when I 
view the source images in my working folder, but not in the import window.

I have not made any intentional changes to my digikam configuration 
since the last time I successfully imported my pictures.

How do I troubleshoot this?

I'm running Digikam 8.2.0 on Kubuntu 24.04, installed using apt. I am 
not using any external tools to edit or manage the photos.