China has reportedly put a temporary ban on the selling of tours to Mount Geumgang in North Korea.

An employee at a Beijing tourism agency says that about one month ago, travel agencies were ordered to stop selling tours to the mountain resort.

In line with the ban, all travel agencies in Beijing that had been selling Geumgang tours have taken the packages off their Web sites.

Starting in March, Chinese agencies had been conducting five-day tours of Beijing, Pyongyang, and the Mount Geumgang resort. About 30 tourists reportedly booked tours to Oegeumgang, or an area of the Geumgang resort that lies along the east coast.

The South Korean government had earlier requested that China put a halt to the tours amid worsening inter-Korean relations resulting from the “Cheonan” incident.