Hyundai Asan, South Korea’s main operator of inter-Korean tourism projects, will withdraw the first batch of its one hundred workers from North Korea on Friday.

Pyongyang on Wednesday halted the ongoing construction of a family reunion center at the North’s Mount Geumgang and ordered the South Korean workers out by Friday in an apparent protest of South Korea's suspension of rice and fertilizer aid.

A Hyundai official says that after talks with Pyongyang, Hyundai decided to pull out a hundred of its one-hundred-35 total workers there, along with some equipment from the North on Friday, and withdraw the remaining personnel and materials in phases.

In a fax message Wednesday, Pyongyang had demanded the withdrawal of the construction workers, saying no humanitarian projects can continue between the two Koreas.

The center's construction was about a quarter complete.

Seoul suspended aid to North Korea at last week’s Cabinet-level talks in protest of the North’s missile tests.