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MARK AUSTIN THOMAS: At the UN, major global powers are edging closer to setting sanctions on North Korea. This past Monday the communist nation announced it had carried out a nuclear test. Jocelyn Ford has more.

JOCELYN FORD: The latest U.S. sanctions draft making the rounds at the United Nations would impose some economic restrictions on North Korea.

It would also ban Pyongyang from developing or transferring weapons of mass destruction.

But the draft proposal would not allow the use of military force to uphold the sanctions.

Today, the presidents of North Korea’s biggest economic partners, China and South Korea, met in Beijing. They said a nuclear-free Korean peninsula should be achieved in a “stable manner.”

Marcus Noland is with the Institute for International Economics in Washington.

MARCUS NOLAND:“It is unlikely that China is going to want to go as far as the United States and Japan and other countries do.”

Neither China nor South Korea want to see sanctions that could make their North Korean neighbor collapse. That might send refugees flooding into their countries.

In Beijing, I’m Jocelyn Ford for Marketplace.