Yeah, the “20 years hard labor” kinda clued me in that south vietnam mightve been evil. Seriously, no agenda here other than that forced labor is barbaric, but I dont know what it was like to live in north vietnam. Would you say that they were justified in their use of things such as Punji sticks? Ive always thought those were barbaric too, but not quite as barbaric as Agent Orange. Certainly more effective though when factoring in that youre not doing massive damage to your own troops and the environment.

I'd say, personally, that the means of resistance used by North Vietnam were largely valid. Having someone stabbed by a stick is not really fundamentally crueler than shooting them, even if infection is what finishes them off. The poor prison conditions are arguable; but the use of torture on PoWs is indefensible. That being said, South Vietnam tortured North Vietnamese PoWs, so it's not like it was some exceptional sin of NV; we just remember North Vietnam's because it was inflicted on American PoWs.

Interesting enough, the US government actually stopped using Agent Orange considerably before the end of the war when it came to light that it had deleterious long-term effects on people. The US had enough bad press during the war, it didn't need 'knowingly sanctioning chemical warfare' in addition. Agent Orange was supposed to be just a defoliant - which has its own set of problems, mind you, but is not a war crime, unlike use of chemical weapons.

To rephrase, I understand that an occupying/invading force is expected to be met with lethal resistance, but was the situation so bad/ cruel that hypothetical war crimes(i have no idea if the north did war crimes, i would imagine yes, but i know the US did) were justified in self defense?

The North and the South both performed numerous war crimes, and in both cases, it was... pretty militarily irrelevant to the outcome. I'd say the war crimes weren't justified in self-defense, but also that that judgement is pretty married to the fact that war crimes generally don't actually help the cause of self-defense. They're just the product of soldiers' and politicians' anger, without a deeper rational basis.

Also, theyre capitalist now? Were they even communist to begin with, or was that just another example of the US not having any clue what communism is? Or have they just shifted more towards capitalism?

North Vietnam was definitely Communist at the time, but they've shifted towards capitalism in the late 80s/90s.

Funny enough, there's a great documentary called The Fog of War, wherein the American Secretary of Defense during the Vietnam War, Robert McNamara, is interviewed about the whole situation in retrospect. He muses, fairly early on, that one of the core conflicts between the American foreign policy establishment and North Vietnam was that the USA had no fucking clue about the background situation in Vietnam.