President Yoon Suk Yeol has reportedly used harsh rhetoric against the ongoing cargo truckers’ strike, saying it is no better than North Korea’s nuclear threat.

Yonhap News on Monday quoted multiple presidential officials as saying that Yoon made the remark regarding the collective walkout by the Cargo Truckers Solidarity union during a recent closed-door meeting with his top aides.

Yonhap said that according to the aides, the president said the nation wouldn't be facing the North Korean crisis it does now had a policy been implemented based on a zero-tolerance principle against North Korea's nuclear weapons.

Yoon also reportedly said if the government succumbs to unlawful acts and violence, a vicious cycle will continue, stressing the need to sternly punish the union leadership’s act of disrupting unionized truckers’ return to work or threatening them.

A senior official of the presidential office told Yonhap that the president was merely reiterating his consistent emphasis on laws and principles that goes beyond ideologies and political camps.