By Kim Jong-Un's managed to work out a slightly uneasy rapprochement with president Donald Trump, traditionally the most powerful man on Earth, but now he's setting his sights a bit higher. He wants the Pope to visit Pyongyang.
Kim has asked South Korean president Moon Jae-in to pass on a message to Pope Francis when he visits Europe next month. "During the meeting with Pope Francis, [Moon] will relay the message from chairman Kim Jong-un that he would ardently welcome the Pope if he visits Pyongyang," a spokesman for Moon said.
Pope Francis would be the first Pope to drop into the DPRK, though John Paul II was invited along by Kim Jong-il. He might not be the most unexpected public figure to see what life is like under the rule of the Kim dynasty, though.
Dennis Rodman
As Kim Jong-un was a fan of Rodman's Chicago Bulls basketball team as a young despot-in-waiting, Rodman was invited over for the first time in 2013 and has since met him repeatedly, getting on so well with Kim that Rodman declared them "friends for life" and that they "ride horses, we hang out, we go skiing, we hardly ever talk politics and that’s the good thing". Rodman told Good Morning Britain that he'd "straighten things out" between Kim and Trump at the height of their sabre-rattling, and, to be fair to him, how many nuclear wars have broken out since then? Exactly.
Muhammad Ali
Ali headed to Pyongyang with pro wrestler Ric Flair at the invitation of Japanese wrestler Antonio Inoki in 1995 for a big wrestle-a-thon in front of Kim Jong-Il, and it sounds like it went exactly as well as you'd expect. Flair later wrote in his autobiography: "At one function, we were sitting at a big, round table with a group of North Korean luminaries when one of the guys started rambling on about the moral superiority of North Korea, and how they could take out the United States or Japan any time they wanted. Suddenly, Ali piped up, clear as a bell, 'No wonder we hate these motherfuckers.'" The North Korean minister responsible for the trip was reportedly purged.
Damon Albarn
The Blur and Gorillaz singer wasn't in town for the pro wrestling tournament, but the song 'Pyongyang' on Blur's 2015 album The Magic Whip was inspired by a visit in 2014. "Visiting North Korea was like going into the rabbit hole in Alice in Wonderland," he said later. "It felt like I was falling under the spell." It sounds like he had quite a nice time though: "I felt that the people that I interacted with were really nice genuine human beings. Apart from the bullshit." Footage Albarn shot while on the trip turned up in the video for Gorillaz' 'Sleeping Powder' too.
Gerard Depardieu
The actor was spotted by journalists in the Yangakdo hotel in Pyongyang ahead of celebrations marking North Korea's 70th anniversary. Depardieu got a bit narked at being noticed, telling the journalists, "I don’t want journalists". An associate even told told one reporter that he'd "have a bad time" if he didn't stop asking Depardieu for a quote. He did, however, grant a selfie to a member of the Turkish 'friendship' delegation to North Korea at the airport.
That isn't John Torode from Masterchef in the background, by the way. It's not entirely clear what Depardieu was doing in Pyongyang, but he holds duel French and Russian citizenship and is a mate of Vladimir Putin's, so he might have been doing a solid for a pal.
