Discuss the following statement about the Korean War, nationalism, and the Cold War. "Even though Korean nationalism is critical towards...

The Korean War was clearly caused in part by nationalism. 
The North Korean invasion of the South was caused partly by a desire to reunite the
country so that all Koreans could be under one
government.

However, this was clearly a Cold War conflict. 
First of all, the invasion only happened with the permission and help of the Soviet
Union.  The USSR provided the North with modern weapons, even including airplanes and
Soviet pilots. Second, the rest of the war was clearly a Cold War conflict.  The
Northern invasion was resisted by a coalition of Western nations led by the United
States.  Then, after the US forces pushed far into North Korea, the Chinese entered the
war.  They did this because they thought that the US would try to invade China to bring
down its communist government.  In this way, the conduct of the war played out along
Cold War lines featuring allies of the Soviet Union against the US and its
allies.

So, the start of the war was due in part to Korean
nationalism, but the war was much more of a Cold War conflict
overall.