MIRYANG, South Korea — The traditional farming villages within Miryang city, like so many in South Korea, are nestled against forested mountains. Rice paddies spill out into the valley, and persimmon and apple orchards line the roads.

Wooden farmhouses with their tile roofs were replaced long ago with concrete homes, but the rituals of a more ancient Korea remain. The farmers plan their lives around the growing seasons, and when they die, they are buried in plots that dot the mountainsides.

Now, a more modern Korea — in the form of imposing electrical power lines — is encroaching on the villages, including their burial grounds. The villages lie in the path of a major transmission route expected to distribute nuclear-generated electricity. Already towers are built along the spines of some nearby mountains, and 50 more are scheduled to be built in Miryang, some of them in the mountains.

But not if some of the villagers have anything to say about it. For the past two years, the villagers have staged protests that included a rare self-immolation, demonstrations in Seoul and a two-year sleep-in by older women who have built tents on the tops of mountains on the plots the utility company cleared for some of the towers. The women take breaks to go back to their homes, but most of the women sleep there in rotations, warmed in the winter by kerosene heaters. They fly Korean flags from their plastic-covered shelters.