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

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:

1. 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

2. Various combinations with should_i_escape_or_not set to TRUE or FALSE.

3. 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.

4. 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?"
    )

    ```

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?"
  )
```