YEONGJU, South Korea  Lee Si-kap, a shy farmer living in this central South Korean town, holds a record: He owns more satellite dishes than any other South Korean  85 of them, receiving 1,500 satellite television channels from more than 100 countries, some as far away as South Africa and Canada.

To passers-by, Mr. Lee’s home stands like an exclamation mark in the otherwise nondescript countryside dotted with apple orchards and ginseng fields. Satellite dishes cover his roof like giant steel mushrooms.

They spread into his front yard and blossom in a field behind his house, some as large as 16 feet in diameter.

Once dismissed as a local eccentric, Mr. Lee has more recently emerged as something of a hero of modest fame, featured on national television as “antenna man.” Since late last year, he and thousands of fellow satellite enthusiasts  including the husbands of foreign brides and a few dedicated souls searching for signals from extraterrestrial life forms  have started a campaign to install free satellite dishes for poor foreign brides living in rural South Korea, so they can receive broadcasts from their home countries.