South Korea's players toss their Dutch coach, Guus Hiddink, in the air in celebration on June 29, 2002, at the World Cup Stadium in Daegu, South Korea, after their surprise fourth-place finish in the World Cup. Emmanuel Dunand | AFP | Getty Images

Dutch soccer coach Guus Hiddink, who led South Korea's national soccer team to the 2002 World Cup semifinals, is headed to North Korea this week with plans to build sports facilities inside the sealed country. He's a beloved sports figure in South Korea, and wants to build grounds for futsal — a variation of soccer — for visually impaired athletes, NK News reported. Hiddink, who heads his own foundation, has already built more than a dozen futsal grounds for visually impaired young athletes in South Korea. Hiddink isn't the first sports celebrity to reach out to the isolated nation. In 2013, former NBA star Dennis Rodman traveled to the country to hang court side with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. Hiddink also led the Chelsea Football Club prior in his career.

Kim Jong Un and Dennis Rodman at a basketball game in North Korea in February 2013 Source: HBO

"Sports and cultural exchanges between the two Koreas have been important, and the two sides can seem to occasionally put aside their differences to engage in sports diplomacy," said Jennifer Jung-Kim, a Korea expert and lecturer in Korean history at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Leader Kim, in fact, has made sports a new focus of his government. Kim, who has bemoaned that the north is trailing the world in sports science and strategy, has imported foreign coaches and trainers, as noted by Marcus Noland, a North Korea expert and author of the blog, "Witness to Transformation." Read MoreHow millennials are shaking North Korea's regime

So does sports diplomacy ultimately work? While there have been collaborations between the north and south at prior Asian and Olympic games, the events have yielded little diplomatic progress. "Sport can play a role in diplomacy. But frankly, it has not played much of a role in Korea," said Noland, also executive vice president of the Peterson Institute for International Economics. In the end, more significant change inside North Korea may come from market forces.

Growing North Korea markets