In his 2020 bestseller, billionaire dealmaker Michael ByungJu Kim’s leading character is a young banker who finds himself tangled in the dealings of South Korea’s wealthiest families.

Now, fact appears to be following fiction.

Last month, Kim’s eponymous private equity firm MBK Partners stepped into one of the most fraught corporate battles in recent Korean history, a tussle pitting the founding families behind heavyweight Korea Zinc against each other.