Karen leaders attended the conference only as observers and were not a part of the agreement. The Karen leaders hoped for a separate Karen State within the British Empire, but these plans were frustrated by the fact that the Karen population was widely distributed across lower Burma and not centralized in a well-defined geographical areas like most other minority groups. The date of the signing of the Panglong Agreement has been celebrated in Burma as "Union Day", even though Ne Win effectively dissolved any agreement with Burma's minority communities following his coup in 1962.