Knit a kable to PDF in RMarkdown that includes special characters in the table values - r-markdown

Question

I'm trying to format a kable that includes the permyriad sign "‱". Permyriad means 1 out of every 10,000, so 1‱ = 0.01%.
I can get it to work with the special character σ, as in the screenshot and code below. Looking for a way to replace "σ" replaced with "‱".
I am pretty sure that there exists a magical combination of the three variables what_should_this_be, should_i_escape_or_not, and id_like_to_use_booktabs that will do the trick.
I'm doing this within RStudio using the tinytex package.
Here's what I've attempted so far:
The exact value for the variable what_should_this_be that results in knitting the ‱ sign in the final pdf. The Unicode value for "‱" is U+2031.
Values I've tried:
Combinations of "\textperthousand" with varying numbers of escapes, with and without brackets, with and without opening & closing $
Copy-pasting the ‱ symbol directly with varying numbers of escapes
"\U2031" with varying numbers of escapes
Various combinations with should_i_escape_or_not set to TRUE or FALSE.
I'd like to use booktabs... but that might be asking a bit much, so I've tried various combinations setting id_like_to_use_booktabs to TRUE or FALSE.
Various combinations of setting the "Typeset LaTeX into PDF using:" option in RStudio > Tools > Sweave
```{r, echo = FALSE}
library(magrittr)
what_should_this_be <- "$\\sigma$"
should_escape_or_not <- FALSE
id_like_to_use_booktabs <- TRUE
knitr::kable(
head(mtcars) %>%
dplyr::select(mpg) %>%
tibble::rownames_to_column("car") %>%
dplyr::mutate(mpg = paste0(mpg, what_should_this_be)),
align = "cc",
escape = should_escape_or_not,
booktabs = id_like_to_use_booktabs,
caption = "Works with character $\\sigma$, but what about permyriad?"
)
```

Answer 1

Could use the textcomp package and \textpertenthousand
---
output:
pdf_document:
latex_engine: xelatex
header-includes:
- \usepackage{textcomp}
---
```{r, echo = FALSE}
library(magrittr)
what_should_this_be <- "\\textpertenthousand"
knitr::kable(
head(mtcars) %>%
dplyr::select(mpg) %>%
tibble::rownames_to_column("car") %>%
dplyr::mutate(mpg = paste0(mpg, what_should_this_be)),
align = "cc",
escape = F,
booktabs = T,
caption = "Works with character $\\sigma$, but what about permyriad?"
)
```