All South Korean staff at the light-water reactor construction site in North Korea left Sunday morning after the Korea Peninsula Energy Development Organization terminated the project.

Fifty-seven employees of the Korea Electric Power Corporation of South Korea and KEDO representatives left the North and arrived at South Korea's eastern port of Sokcho.

The North, however, will not allow KEDO to bring back construction equipment and materials worth 45.5 billion won remaining on the site.

More than 1.5 billion dollars has gone into the project, 70 percent of which from Seoul. Thirty-four percent of the construction is complete.

After the nuclear crisis erupted in October 2002, KEDO in November 2003 placed a year suspension on the construction of two reactors in Shinpo in the North's South Hamkyong Province and extended it for another year last year.