I've found this context menu in krusader to be very unreliable over the years, it has hardly ever worked for me. Surely it's possible to configure the context menu to use a custom command, like simply using the zip , ot tar CLI command. I don't find this in the application settings.
The VFS plugins work great, how come this context menu has to use ARK?
The context menu action is provided by Ark itself through the KFileItemAction plugin system. Therefore it can not be changed to use something else.
It would be possible to create a custom context menu entry that uses a tool of your choice for the job though.
The preferred solution in the interest of all would be to report a bug against Ark so this can be solved properly instead of working around it.