South Korean workers who have been constructing a permanent family reunion center in North Korea’s Mount Geumgang resort have returned to the South.

Hyundai Asan, South Korea’s main operator of inter-Korean tourism projects, withdrew the first batch of its one-hundred-six workers Friday.

Hyundai Asan says the remaining 29 workers and construction equipment will be pulled out in phases. The construction of the family reunion center, which started last August, was about a quarter of the way complete.

Pyongyang on Wednesday ordered the South Korean workers out by Friday in an apparent protest of South Korea's suspension of rice and fertilizer aid.

The North’s move came less than a week after Seoul suspended aid to North Korea at last week’s Cabinet-level talks in protest of the North’s missile tests.