  We consider two exit problems for the Korteweg-de Vries equation perturbed by
an additive white in time and colored in space noise of amplitude a. The
initial datum gives rise to a soliton when a=0. It has been proved recently
that the solution remains in a neighborhood of a randomly modulated soliton for
times at least of the order of a^{-2}. We prove exponential upper and lower
bounds for the small noise limit of the probability that the exit time from a
neighborhood of this randomly modulated soliton is less than T, of the same
order in a and T. We obtain that the time scale is exactly the right one. We
also study the similar probability for the exit from a neighborhood of the
deterministic soliton solution. We are able to quantify the gain of eliminating
the secular modes to better describe the persistence of the soliton.
